CHAPTER I.
"Perplex'd in the extreme." "The memory of past favors is like a rainbow, bright, vivid and beautiful." The professor, sitting before his untasted breakfast, is looking the very picture of dismay.

Two letters lie before him; one is in his hand, the other is on the table-cloth.

Both are open; but of one, the opening lines--that tell of the death of his old friend--are all he has read; whereas he has read the other from start to finish, already three times.
It is from the old friend himself, written a week before his death, and very urgent and very pleading.

The professor has mastered its contents with ever-increasing consternation.
Indeed so great a revolution has it created in his mind, that his face--( the index of that excellent part of him)--has, for the moment, undergone a complete change.

Any ordinary acquaintance now entering the professor's rooms (and those acquaintances might be whittled down to quite a _little_ few), would hardly have known him.