ke to
himself ever after the credit of having unearthed the handsome, rich,
and talented Dr. Claudius from a garret in Heidelberg. What a story that
would be to tell next year, when Claudius, clothed and clipped, should
be marrying the girl of the season, or tooling his coach down the
Newport avenue, or doing any of the other fashionable and merry things
that Americans love to do in spring and summer!

So Mr. Barker insisted on driving Claudius back to his lodging, though
it was only five minutes' walk, and exacted a promise that the Doctor
should take him on the morrow to a real German breakfast at the Fauler
Pelz, and that they would "start off somewhere" in the afternoon.

Claudius said he had enjoyed a very pleasant evening, and went up to his
room, where he read an elaborate article on the vortex theory by
Professor Helmholtz, with which, having dipped into transcendental
geometry, he was inclined to find fault; and then he went calmly to bed.

CHAPTER III.

Claudius told his old landlord--his _philister_, as he would have called
him--that he was going away on his customary foot tour for a month or
so. He packed a book and a few things in his knapsack and joined Mr.
Barker. To Claudius in his simplicity there was nothing incongruous in
his travelling as a plain student in the company of the
exquisitely-arrayed New Yorker, and the latter was far too much a man of
the world to care what his companion wore. He intended that the Doctor
should be introduced to the affectionate skill of a London tailor before
he was much older, and he registered a vow that the long yellow hair
should be cut. But these details were the result of his showman's
intuition; personally, he would as readily have travelled with Claudius
had he affected the costume of a shoeblack. He knew that the man was
very rich, and he respected his eccentricity for the present. To
accomplish the transformation of exterior which he contemplated, from
the professional and semi-cynic garb to the splendour of a swell of the
period, Mr. Barker counted on some more potent influence than his own.
The only point on which his mind was made up was that Claudius must
accompany him to America and create a great sensation.

"I wonder if we shall meet her," remarked Mr. Barker reflectively, when
they were seated in the train.

"Whom?" asked Claudius, who did not intend to understand his companion's
chaff.

But Mr. Barker had shot his arrow, and started cle