arvelled. He did
not even look up when he heard the rumble of our wagon. Stacy Shunk
never troubled to look up if he could avoid it. He seemed to have a
third eye which peered through the ragged hole in the top of his hat,
and swept the street, and bored through walls, a tiny search-light, but
one of peculiarly penetrating power. I saw his head move a little as
we drew near, and his body shifted nervously as would a mollusk at the
approach of some hostile substance. Yet sitting thus, eying me only
through the top of his hat, he saw right into my mind, he saw right
into my pockets, he saw the mustard can full of worms, he saw the line,
and the fish-hooks which my mother had thoughtfully wrapped in a
pill-box. How else could he have divined all that he did?

"Well, Davy," he said in a wiry voice, which cut through the din of
rattling harness and creaking wagon, "I see you're goin' a-fishin' for
trout?"

"Yes, sir, Mr. Shunk," I returned, with a politeness that told my
respect for his occult powers.

"Well, mind," he said, intently studying his foot as though he were
reading some mystic signals wigwagged from the gods, "mind, Davy, that
you don't fall into the hands of the Professor. If the Professor
catches you, Davy--" The foot stopped wiggling. The oracle was
silent. Did it fear to reveal to me so dreadful a fate as mine if I
fell into the Professor's clutches? I waved a hand defiantly to the
seer and I rode on. Rode on? I was dragged on by four stout horses
through the village to the mountains, for in my heart I was calling to
my mother, wishing that her gentle warnings had turned me back before I
heard the voice of doom sounding from the depths of Mr. Pound; before I
had seen the comic tragedy enacted by Squire Crumple; above all, before
the man who saw through the top of his hat had uttered his enigmas
about the Professor.

There is something innately repugnant to man in the word "professor."
It makes the flesh creep almost as does the thought of the toad or
snake. Though when a boy of ten I had never seen a "professor," the
word alone was so full of portent that the prospect of seeing one, even
without being caught by him, would have frightened me. I suppose that
the chill which reverberated through my spine and legs echoed the
horror of many generations of my ancestors who had known professors of
all kinds, from those who trimmed their hair and dosed them with
nostrums to those who sat over them