tely sent up to him, he appears to have retired into
the bathroom.

It was while he was shaving that Mrs. Muldoon, knocking at the door,
demanded to speak to him. From her tone the Professor came to the
conclusion that the house was on fire. He opened the door, and Mrs.
Muldoon, seeing he was respectable, slipped in and closed it behind her.

"Where did ye find her? How did she get here?" demanded Mrs. Muldoon.
Never before had the Professor seen Mrs. Muldoon other than a placid,
good-humoured body. She was trembling from head to foot.

"I told you," explained the Professor. "Young Arthur--"

"I'm not asking ye what ye told me," interrupted Mrs. Muldoon. "I'm
asking ye for the truth, if ye know it."

The Professor put a chair for Mrs. Muldoon, and Mrs. Muldoon dropped
down upon it.

"What's the matter?" questioned the Professor. "What's happened?"

Mrs. Muldoon glanced round her, and her voice was an hysterical whisper.

"It's no mortal woman ye've brought into the house," said Mrs. Muldoon.
"It's a fairy."

Whether up to that moment the Professor had really believed Malvina's
story, or whether lurking at the back of his mind there had all along
been an innate conviction that the thing was absurd, the Professor
himself is now unable to say. To the front of the Professor lay
Oxford--political economy, the higher criticism, the rise and progress
of rationalism. Behind him, fading away into the dim horizon of
humanity, lay an unmapped land where for forty years he had loved to
wander; a spirit-haunted land of buried mysteries, lost pathways,
leading unto hidden gates of knowledge.

And now upon the trembling balance descended Mrs. Muldoon plump.

"How do you know?" demanded the Professor.

"Shure, don't I know the mark?" replied Mrs. Muldoon almost
contemptuously. "Wasn't my own sister's child stolen away the very day
of its birth and in its place--"

The little serving maid tapped at the door.

Mademoiselle was "finished." What was to be done with her?

"Don't ask me," protested Mrs. Muldoon, still in a terrified whisper.
"I couldn't do it. Not if all the saints were to go down upon their
knees and pray to me."

Common-sense argument would not have prevailed with Mrs. Muldoon. The
Professor felt that; added to which he had not any handy. He directed,
through the door, that "Mademoiselle" should be shown into the
dining-room, and listened till Drusilla's footsteps had died away.

"Have you