e's hair was actually in his possession.

"Oh, you dear good man!" she exclaimed, "how vastly I am obliged to you!
Ferdinand will never forsake me now."

"Ferdinand! Leonora, I thought you cared for _me_."

"Oh!" she said, "you young men of science are so conceited!"

The discomfited lover fled from the house, and sought the treasurer's
palace. It had vanished with all its monsters. Long did he roam the city
ere he mixed again with the crowd, which an old meteorologist was
addressing energetically.

"I ask you one thing," he was saying. "Will it ever rain again?"

"Certainly not," replied a geologist and a metaphysician together. "Rain
being an agent of Time in the production of change, there can be no place
for it under the present dispensation."

"Then will not the crops be burned up? Will the fruits mature? Are they not
withering already? What of wells and rivers, and the mighty sea itself? Who
will feed your cattle? And who will feed _you_?"

"This concerns us," said the butchers and bakers.

"Us also," added the fishmongers.

"I always thought," said a philosopher, "that this phenomenon must be the
work of some malignant wizard."

"Show us the wizard that we may slay him," roared the mob.

Leonora had been communicative, and the student was immediately identified
by twenty persons. The lock of hair was found upon him, and was held up in
sight of the multitude.

"Kill him!"

"Burn him!"

"Crucify him!"

"It moves! it moves!" cried another division of the crowd. All eyes were
bent on the hitherto stationary luminary. It was moving--no, it wasn't;
yes, it certainly was. Dared men believe that their shadows were actually
lengthening? Was the sun's rim really drawing nigh yonder great edifice?
That muffled sound from the vast, silent multitude was, doubtless, the
quick beating of innumerable hearts; but that sharper note? Could it be the
ticking of watches? Suddenly all the public clocks clanged the first stroke
of an hour--an absurdly wrong hour, but it was an hour. No mortal heard
the second stroke, drowned in universal shouts of joy and gratitude. The
student mingled with the mass, no man regarding him.

When the people had somewhat recovered from their emotion, they fell to
disputing as to the cause of the last marvel. No scientific man could get
beyond a working hypothesis. The mystery was at length solved by a very
humble citizen, a barber.

"Why," he said, "the old gentleman's hair has grown