already recognized."

Euthymia wondered, as well she might, to hear this young woman talking
the language of science like an adept. The truth is, Lurida was one of
those persons who never are young, and who, by way of compensation, will
never be old. They are found in both sexes. Two well-known graduates of
one of our great universities are living examples of this precocious
but enduring intellectual development. If the readers of this narrative
cannot pick them out, they need not expect the writer of it to help
them. If they guess rightly who they are, they will recognize the fact
that just such exceptional individuals as the young woman we are dealing
with are met with from time to time in families where intelligence has
been cumulative for two or three generations.

Euthymia was very willing that the questioning and questionable visitor
should learn all that was known in the village about the nebulous
individual whose misty environment all the eyes in the village were
trying to penetrate, but that he should learn it from some other
informant than Lurida.

The next morning, as the Interviewer took his seat on a bench outside
his door, to smoke his after-breakfast cigar, a bright-looking and
handsome youth, whose features recalled those of Euthymia so strikingly
that one might feel pretty sure he was her brother, took a seat by his
side. Presently the two were engaged in conversation. The Interviewer
asked all sorts of questions about everybody in the village. When he
came to inquire about Maurice, the youth showed a remarkable interest
regarding him. The greatest curiosity, he said, existed with reference
to this personage. Everybody was trying to find out what his story
was,--for a story, and a strange one, he must surely have,--and nobody
had succeeded.

The Interviewer began to be unusually attentive. The young man told him
the various antipathy stories, about the evil-eye hypothesis, about
his horse-taming exploits, his rescuing the student whose boat was
overturned, and every occurrence he could recall which would help out
the effect of his narrative.

The Interviewer was becoming excited. "Can't find out anything about
him, you said, did n-'t you? How do you know there's anything to find?
Do you want to know what I think he is? I'll tell you. I think he is an
actor,--a fellow from one of the city theatres. Those fellows go off in
their summer vacation, and like to puzzle the country folks. They are
the ver