r gate. Here I washed the arm at the fountain, and smoothed my
disarranged clothing. I hid my booty under my overcoat, nodded to the
sleepy old janitor as he opened the door to me, and a few moments
later I entered my own room with an expression which I had attempted
to make quite calm and careless.

"What the devil is the matter with you, Simsen?" cried Soelling as he
saw me. "Have you seen a ghost? Or is the punch wearing off already?
We thought you'd never come; why, it's nearly twelve o'clock!"

Without a word I drew back my overcoat and laid my booty on the table.

"By all the devils," exclaimed Soelling in anatomical enthusiasm,
"where did you find that superb arm? Simsen knows what he's about all
right. It's a girl's arm; isn't it beautiful? Just look at the
hand--how fine and delicate it is! Must have worn a No. 6 glove.
There's a pretty hand to caress and kiss!"

The arm passed from one to the other amid general admiration. Every
word that was said increased my disgust for myself and for what I had
done. It was a woman's arm, then--what sort of a woman might she have
been? Young and beautiful possibly--her brothers' pride, her parents'
joy. She had faded away in her youth, cared for by loving hands and
tender thoughts. She had fallen asleep gently, and those who loved her
had desired to give her in death the peace she had enjoyed throughout
her lifetime. For this they had made her coffin of thick, heavy oaken
boards. And this hand, loved and missed by so many--it lay there now
on an anatomical table, encircled by clouds of tobacco smoke, stared
at by curious glances, and made the object of coarse jokes. O God! how
terrible it was!

"I must have that arm," exclaimed Soelling, when the first burst of
admiration had passed. "When I bleach it and touch it up with varnish,
it will be a superb specimen. I'll take it home with me."

"No," I exclaimed, "I can't permit it. It was wrong of me to bring it
away from the churchyard. I'm going right back to put the arm in its
place."

"Well, will you listen to that?" cried Soelling, amid the hearty
laughter of the others. "Simsen's so lyric, he certainly must be
drunk. I must have that arm at any cost."

"Not much," cut in Niels Daae; "you have no right to it. It was buried
in the earth and dug out again; it is a find, and all the rest of us
have just as much right to it as you have."

"Yes, every one of us has some share in it," said some one else.

"But what ar