town there is always a human spider lurking in the background, who
steals out upon any human fly that may pause to look at the wares.

This spider presently appeared--a wizened woman with a face like that
of a witch. Von Holzen pointed upward to the room above them. She shook
her head regretfully.

"Still alive," she said.

And the professor turned toward the stair, but paused at the bottom
step.

"Here," he said, extending his fingers. "Some milk. How much has he
had?"

"Two jugs," she replied, "and three jugs of water. One would say he has
a fire inside him."

"So he has," said the professor, with a grim smile, as he went
upstairs. He ascended slowly, puffing out the smoke of his cigar before
him with a certain skill, so that his progress was a form of
fumigation. The fear of infection is the only fear to which men will
own, and it is hard to understand why this form of cowardice should be
less despicable than others. Von Holzen was a German, and that nation
combines courage with so deep a caution that mistaken persons sometimes
think the former adjunct lacking. The mark of a wound across his cheek
told that in his student days this man had, after due deliberation,
considered it necessary to fight. Some, looking at Von Holzen's face,
might wonder what mark the other student bore as a memento of that
encounter.