XXXI.--MOTHER AND SON

XXXII.--WHERE TWO ROADS MEET

XXXIII.--TILL THE ELEVENTH HOUR

XXXIV.--THE HOUR AND THE MAN




CHAPTER I.

HOW PROFESSOR VALEYON LOSES HIS HANDKERCHIEF.


One warm afternoon in June--the warmest of the season thus
far--Professor Valeyon sat, smoking a black clay pipe, upon the broad
balcony, which extended all across the back of his house, and overlooked
three acres of garden, inclosed by a solid stone-wall. All the doors in
the house were open, and most of the windows, so that any one passing in
the road might have looked up through the gabled porch and the
passage-way, which divided the house, so to speak, into two parts, and
seen the professor's brown-linen legs, and slippers down at the heel,
projecting into view beyond the framework of the balcony-door.
Indeed--for the professor was an elderly man, and, in many respects, a
creature of habit--precisely this same phenomenon could have been
observed on any fine afternoon during the summer, even to the exact
amount of brown-linen leg visible.