nued.]

* * * * *

THE PROFESSOR'S STORY.

CHAPTER XV.

PHYSIOLOGICAL.

If Master Bernard felt a natural gratitude to his young pupil for saving
him from an imminent peril, he was in a state of infinite perplexity
to know why he should have needed such aid. He, an active, muscular,
courageous, adventurous young fellow, with a stick in his hand, ready to
hold down the Old Serpent himself, if he had come in his way, to stand
still, staring into those two eyes, until they came up close to him,
and the strange, terrible sound seemed to freeze him stiff where he
stood,--what was the meaning of it? Again, what was the influence this
girl had exerted, under which the venomous creature had collapsed in
such a sudden way? Whether he had been awake or dreaming he did not feel
quite sure. He knew he had gone up The Mountain, at any rate; he knew he
had come down The Mountain with the girl walking just before him;--there
was no forgetting her figure, as she walked on in silence, her braided
locks falling a little, for want of the lost hair-pin, perhaps, and
looking like a wreathing coil of--Shame on such fancies!--to wrong that
supreme crowning gift of abounding Nature, a rush of shining black hair,
that, shaken loose, would cloud her all round, like Godiva, from brow to
instep! He was sure he had sat down before the fissure or cave. He was
sure that he was led softly away from the place, and that it was Elsie
who had led him. There was the hair-pin to show that so far it was not a
dream. But between these recollections came a strange confusion; and the
more the master thought, the more he was perplexed to know whether she
had waked him, sleeping, as he sat on the stone, from some frightful
dream, such as may come in a very brief slumber, or whether she had
bewitched him into a trance with those strange eyes of hers, or whether
it was all true, and he must solve its problem as he best might.

There was another recollection connected with this mountain adventure.
As they approached the mansion-house, they met a young man, whom Mr.
Bernard remembered having seen once at least before, and whom he had
heard of as a cousin of the young girl. As Cousin Richard Venner, the
person in question, passed them, he took the measure, so to speak, of
Mr. Bernard, with a look so piercing, so exhausting, so practised, so
profoundly suspicious, that the young master felt in an instant that he
had an enemy i