something about the features of the
recumbent young man arrested her attention.

The postman's whistle fell from her pretty lips; her startled eyes
widened as she bent closer to examine the perfections which had
captivated her from a scientific standpoint.

At that instant consciousness began to return; he gave a sudden spasmodic
and comprehensive flop; there was a report like a pistol. His chest
improver had exploded.

Terrified, trembling, she dropped on her knees beside him; never before
had she heard of a young man being blown to pieces by chloroform. Then,
almost hysterical, she ran to the stream, filled her leather satchel with
water, and, running back again, emptied it upon his upturned
countenance.

Horror on horror! His golden brown hair--his very scalp seemed to be
parting from his forehead--eyebrows, silky moustache, lips--his entire
face seemed to be coming off; and, as she shrieked and tottered to her
feet, he began to sputter and kick so violently that both pneumatic
calves blew up like the reports of a double-barreled shotgun.

And Ethra reeled back against a tree and cowered there, covering her
shocked eyes with shaking fingers.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

VII

IT is a surprising and trying moment for a girl who throws water upon a
young man's face to see that face begin to dissolve and come off, feature
by feature, in polychromatic splendour.

She did not faint; her intellect reeled for a moment; then she dropped
her hands from her eyes and saw him sitting up on the ground, blinking at
her gravely from a streaked and gaudy countenance. His wig was tilted
over one eye; rouge and pearl powder made his cheeks and chin very gay;
and his handsome, silky moustache hung by one corner from his upper lip.
It was too much. She sat down limply on a mossy log and wept.

His senses returned gradually; after a while he got up and walked down to
the edge of the brook with all the dignity that unsteady legs permitted.

Fascinated, she watched him at his ablutions where he squatted by the
water's edge, scrubbing away as industriously as a washer-racoon. It did
not occur to her to flee; curiosity dominated--an overpowering desire to
see what he really resembled in _puris naturalibus_.

After a while he stood up, hurled the damp wig into the woods, wiped his
hands on his knickerbockers and his face on his sleeve, and, bending
over, examined his collapsed calves.

And all the while, as the f