. "Professor
Serviss, this is the Reverend Mr. Clarke, the pastor of our church."

As Serviss shook hands with the Reverend Clarke he experienced a
distinct shock of repulsion--an unaccountable feeling, for the
clergyman was decidedly handsome, at first sight. But his hand was
cold, his face pallid, and a bitter line, the worn pathway of a sneer,
curved at one corner of his mouth. "Unwholesome, anaemic," was
Serviss's inward comment as he turned away to address the girl, whose
change of manner exerted a new witchery over him.

She was dressed in black for some reason, and her face seemed both sad
and morose, but the graceful dignity of her strong young body was
enhanced by her dark gown. Her hands, her feet, were shapely, without
being dainty. "Plainly these women come of good stock, no matter what
the husband and father may be," Serviss thought. He resented the
clergyman's intrusive presence more and more. "Is he brought in as a
safeguard?" he asked himself.

Mr. Clarke's attitude was certainly forbidding. He perched in grim,
expectant silence on the edge of his chair, waiting, watching. His
lean face had the blue-white look of the much-shaven actor, and his
manner was as portentous as that of a tragedian.

"What the devil does he mean by staring at me like that?" Serviss
continued to ask himself. "Does he expect me to go off like a bomb?"

He had started a discussion of the weather or some other harmless
topic, when Clarke began, in a deep voice, with the formal inflections
of the parson: "Miss Lambert tells me you are from Corlear University,
professor?"

Serviss groaned and threw up his hands with a comical gesture. "Well,
let it go at that. I suppose it explains me to call me 'professor.'
Yes, I have a connection there--I draw a salary from the
institution."

The clergyman regarded him soberly, as did the women, without sharing
his humor in the least. Evidently being a professor in a university
was no light thing to a Western preacher. "She tells me you have
proposed to act as her adviser--"

Again Serviss protested. "Oh, nothing so formidable as that, my dear
sir. I have promised to make inquiries for her." Then, obscurely moved
to create a better impression in the girl's mind, he added: "I shall
be very happy, of course, to do all that is in my power to aid you,
Miss Lambert, but, as I have just been saying to your mother, I can
only act through my friends. Nobody enjoys music more than I, but no
one c