He stood ruefully looking at his reflection in the mirror. “I look like a kid!” said he scornfully. “I have been so busy with this confounded foolishness that I did not think of looking in a glass. Pshaw! I’m going to drop this nonsense and go home; I know that my wife is worried about me before this time. I haven’t written to her since I came here. I didn’t want her to know what I was doing.” “You ought to have told her, though,” said the professor. “You don’t know Maria!” said Christopher sadly. “Confound it! How my head aches! Now that I take time to think of it, I know that it has ached for a week.” The following morning Christopher was very ill, and was not able to leave his room for weeks. When at last he arose, he giddily crossed the room to the mirror, and looked at himself; he sank into a chair with a groan; not a vestige of hair remained on head or face. He covered his long, leathery face with his hands, and cried aloud: “I look like a great big sole-leather baby! Whatever will Maria say! I’ll never tell her that it is the effect of that confounded “X” ray; if I did I should never hear the last of it; I’ve been sick, I am sick—sick of the whole business.” Meanwhile at home, Maria had at first reproached herself with her irritability, and finished by writing Christopher a loving, and penitent little note, which she sent to Abbeyville. Of course she received no reply. “He must have been very angry,” she sobbingly exclaimed. She wrote again, a still more penitent and pleading letter; this not being answered, she became very indignant. “If he wants to be so awfully huffy, let him!” she said wrathfully; but when a whole month passed, and no tidings came as to his whereabouts, she became alarmed, and began to institute cautious inquiries. Of course, all search proved unavailing, and Maria wept and mourned her Christopher as dead. Nearly five months from the day he left his home, Christopher wearily climbed the front steps of his own residence, and rang the bell. His clothing hung loosely on his gaunt limbs; his long, thin face was the color of leather; his eyes, devoid of lashes, and without eyebrows, looked perfectly lifeless. Hannah, an old servant in the family, opened the door. “If you want food go to the rear door,” she cried sharply, as she shut him out unceremoniously. He sat down on the upper step, pale and trembling. “What does Hannah mean by insulting me thus? Can it be that Maria is so angry that she has ordered the servants to refuse me admittance?” He mopped his forehead with his handkerchief, although the air was frosty and nipping. Presently he muttered to himself: “I’ll just stay around until Maria comes out, then I’ll persuade her to forgive me. I’ve acted the fool, that’s sure.” He walked up and down the street, and hung around corners, until the whole neighborhood were watching him. About three in the afternoon, Maria came out of the house dressed in the deepest of mourning.