classroom, at a lecture. Dear me, how dreadful! I must go and see the
president at once."

Mr. Furlong was about to reach for his hat and stick when at that
moment the aged clerk knocked at the door.

"Dr. Boomer," he announced in a tone of solemnity suited to the
occasion.

Dr. Boomer entered, shook hands in silence and sat down.

"You have heard our sad news, I suppose?" he said. He used the word
"our" as between the university president and his honorary treasurer.

"How did it happen?" asked Mr. Furlong.

"Most distressing," said the president. "Dr. McTeague, it seems, had
just entered his ten o'clock class (the hour was about ten-twenty) and
was about to open his lecture, when one of his students rose in his
seat and asked a question. It is a practice," continued Dr. Boomer,
"which, I need hardly say, we do not encourage; the young man, I
believe, was a newcomer in the philosophy class. At any rate, he asked
Dr. McTeague, quite suddenly it appears; how he could reconcile his
theory of transcendental immaterialism with a scheme of rigid moral
determinism. Dr. McTeague stared for a moment, his mouth, so the class
assert, painfully open. The student repeated the question, and poor
McTeague fell forward over his desk, paralysed."

"Is he dead?" gasped Mr. Furlong.

"No," said the president. "But we expect his death at any moment. Dr.
Slyder, I may say, is with him now and is doing all he can."

"In any case, I suppose, he could hardly recover enough to continue his
college duties," said the young rector.

"Out of the question," said the president. "I should not like to state
that of itself mere paralysis need incapacitate a professor. Dr. Thrum,
our professor of the theory of music, is, as you know, paralysed in his
ears, and Mr. Slant, our professor of optics, is paralysed in his right
eye. But this is a case of paralysis of the brain. I fear it is
incompatible with professorial work."

"Then, I suppose," said Mr. Furlong senior, "we shall have to think of
the question of a successor."

They had both _been_ thinking of it for at least three minutes. "We
must," said the president. "For the moment I feel too stunned by the
sad news to act. I have merely telegraphed to two or three leading
colleges for a _locum tenens_ and sent out a few advertisements
announcing the chair as vacant. But it will be difficult to replace
McTeague. He was a man," added Dr. Boomer, rehearsing in advance,
unconsciously, no doub