kes about his automobile, as we called it. It had a
little handle in front, instead of a steering-wheel, and a man behind to
push, instead of an engine."

"How horrible!" remarked George with genuine feeling.

"I remember the poor devil had a paralysis soon after," continued the
friend, quite carelessly. "He could not steer any more, and also he lost
his voice. When you met him he would look at you as it he thought he was
talking, but all he could say was 'Ga-ga-ga'."

George went away from this conversation in a cold sweat. He told himself
over and over again that he was a fool, but still he could not get the
hellish idea out of his mind. He found himself brooding over it all day
and lying awake at night, haunted by images of himself in a wheel-chair,
and without any hair on his head. He realized that the sensible thing
would be for him to go to a doctor and make certain about his condition;
but he could not bring himself to face the ordeal--he was ashamed to
admit to a doctor that he had laid himself open to such a taint.

He began to lose the radiant expression from his round and rosy face. He
had less appetite, and his moods of depression became so frequent that
he could not hide then even from Henriette. She asked him once or twice
if there were not something the matter with him, and he laughed--a
forced and hurried laugh--and told her that he had sat up too late the
night before, worrying over the matter of his examinations. Oh, what a
cruel thing it was that a man who stood in the very gateway of such
a garden of delight should be tormented and made miserable by this
loathsome idea!

The disturbing symptom still continued, and so at last George purchased
a medical book, dealing with the subject of the disease. Then, indeed,
he opened up a chamber of horrors; he made up his mind an abiding place
of ghastly images. In the book there were pictures of things so awful
that he turned white, and trembled like a leaf, and had to close the
volume and hide it in the bottom of his trunk. But he could not banish
the pictures from his mind. Worst of all, he could not forget the
description of the first symptom of the disease, which seemed to
correspond exactly with his own. So at last he made up his mind he must
ascertain definitely the truth about his condition.

He began to think over plans for seeing a doctor. He had heard somewhere
a story about a young fellow who had fallen into the hands of a quack,
and been ruine