want to
take my hat off to the first scholar of his year.

Dr. Butts felt somewhat in the same way as he contemplated The Terror.
She surprised him so often with her knowledge that he was ready to
receive her without astonishment when she burst in upon him one allay
with a cry of triumph, "Eureka! Eureka!"

"And what have you found, my dear?" said the doctor.

Lurida was flushed and panting with the excitement of her new discovery.

"I do believe that I have found the secret of our strange visitor's
dread of all human intercourse!"

The seasoned practitioner was not easily thrown off his balance.

"Wait a minute and get your breath," said the doctor. "Are you not a
little overstating his peculiarity? It is not quite so bad as that.
He keeps a man to serve him, he was civil with the people at the Old
Tavern, he was affable enough, I understand, with the young fellow he
pulled out of the water, or rescued somehow,--I don't believe be avoids
the whole human race. He does not look as if he hated them, so far as I
have remarked his expression. I passed a few words with him when his man
was ailing, and found him polite enough. No, I don't believe it is much
more than an extreme case of shyness, connected, perhaps, with some
congenital or other personal repugnance to which has been given the name
of an antipathy."

Lurida could hardly keep still while the doctor was speaking. When he
finished, she began the account of her discovery:

"I do certainly believe I have found an account of his case in an
Italian medical journal of about fourteen years ago. I met with a
reference which led me to look over a file of the Giornale degli
Ospitali lying among the old pamphlets in the medical section of the
Library. I have made a translation of it, which you must read and then
tell me if you do not agree with me in my conclusion."

"Tell me what your conclusion is, and I will read your paper and see for
myself whether I think the evidence justifies the conviction you seem to
have reached."

Lurida's large eyes showed their whole rounds like the two halves of a
map of the world, as she said,

"I believe that Maurice Kirkwood is suffering from the effects of the
bite of a TARANTULA!"

The doctor drew a long breath. He remembered in a vague sort of way the
stories which used to be told of the terrible Apulian spider, but he had
consigned them to the limbo of medical fable where so many fictions have
clothed themselves with a l