CLAUDIUS, PH.D.




DOCTOR CLAUDIUS.




CHAPTER I.


"I believe I am old," said the Doctor, pushing his straight-backed
wooden chair from the table, and turning from his books to look out of
his small window. "Yes, I am certainly very old," he said again, rapping
absently on the arm of the chair with the pen he held. But the fingers
that held the instrument were neither thin nor withered, and there was
no trembling in the careless motion of the hand. The flaxen hair, long
and tangled, was thick on the massive head, and the broad shoulders were
flat and square across. Whatever Dr. Claudius might say of himself, he
certainly did not look old.

And yet he said to himself that he was, and he probably knew. He said to
himself, as he had said every day for many long months, that this was
the secret of the difference he felt between his life and the life of
his companions--such companions as he had, between his thoughts and
their thoughts, between his ways and their ways. Of late the fancy had
gained a stronger hold on his imagination, excited by solitude and an
undue consumption of the midnight oil, and as he turned his face to the