as he had said a minute before, a terrible night. He could hear
the wind beating about the house and rattling about the casements and
moaning down the chimneys; and to think any poor soul should be out on
such a night, _dying_! Heaven preserve others who might be belated or
houseless in any part of the world!

He fell into a fit of abstraction,--a habit not uncommon with learned
men,--wondering why life should be so different with different people;
why he should be in that warm, handsome room, with its soft rich
hangings and carpet, with its beautiful furniture of carved wood, its
pictures, and the rare china scattered here and there among the grim
array of skeletons which were his delight. He wondered why he should
take his tea out of costly and valuable Oriental china, sugar and cream
out of antique silver, while other poor souls had no tea at all, and
nothing to take it out of even if they had. He wondered why he
should have a lamp under his teapot that was a very marvel of art
transparencies; why he should have every luxury, and this poor creature
should be dying in the street amid the wind and the rain. It was all
very unequal.

It was very odd, the professor argued, leaning his back against the
tall, warm stove; it was very odd indeed. He began to feel that, grand
as the study of osteology undoubtedly is, he ought not to permit it
to become so engrossing as to blind him to the study of the greater
philosophies of life. His reverie was, however, broken by the abrupt
reentrance of Koosje, who this time was a trifle less breathless than
she had been before.

"We have got her into the kitchen, professor," she announced. "She is a
child--a mere baby, and so pretty! She has opened her eyes and spoken."

"Give her some soup and wine--hot," said the professor, without
stirring.

"But won't you come?" she asked.

The professor hesitated; he hated attending in cases of illness, though
he was a properly qualified doctor and in an emergency would lay his
prejudice aside.

"Or shall I run across for the good Dr. Smit?" Koosje asked. "He would
come in a minute, only it is _such_ a night!"

At that moment a fiercer gust than before rattled at the casements, and
the professor laid aside his scruples.

He followed his housekeeper down the chilly, marble-flagged passage into
the kitchen, where he never went for months together--a cosey enough,
pleasant place, with a deep valance hanging from the mantel-shelf, with
many