One of them wagered that he would put the anatomist out of countenance. He set himself right before him in the street: “Well, by Jove, Dr. Knox, you are the ugliest fellow I ever saw in my life!” Knox quietly patted the impudent student on the shoulder: “Ah! then you cannot have seen my brother Fred!” As it happened, Fred was much the handsomer of the two, but he had been rather a thorn in the side of the anatomist, who had shown him much kindness, and maybe Knox was not ill pleased at the chance to give him a sly dig. His own students doted on him, they called him Robert for short. “Yes,” said an enemy, “Robert le Diable”; as such the people regarded him. How he escaped death, or at least bodily injury, is a little curious; even the students were affrighted at the yells and howls of the mob outside his evening classroom. The lecturer pointed out that he had never missed a single lecture, and that he was not afraid. Once the rabble burned his effigy and attacked his house. Knox escaped to his friend, Dr. Adams, in St. Patrick Square. He was asked how he dare venture out. He said he preferred to meet his fate, whatever it was, outside than die like a rat in a hole, then he threw open the military cloak that he wore and revealed a sword, pistols, and a Highland dirk. The brutes might kill him, but he would account for at least twenty of them first. All sorts of legends were told about him. He had many Kaffir skulls in his museum, and he was alleged to have explained: “Why, sir, there was no difficulty in Kaffraria. I had but to walk out of my tent and shoot as many as I wanted for scientific and ethnological purposes.” Knox _had_ experiences in South Africa, but they were not of this kind. In chap books and popular ditties his name ever went with the West Port murderers—a verse may be given: “Burke an’ Hare Fell doun the stair Wi’ a leddy in a box Gaun tae Doctor Knox.” Once when walking in the Meadows with Dr. Adams, Knox gave a penny and said some pleasant words to a pretty little girl of six who was playing there. “Would she come and live with him,” he said jestingly, “if he gave her a penny every day?” The child shook her head. “No; you’d maybe sell me to Dr. Knox.” His biographer affirms he was more affected by this childish thrust than by all the hostility of the mob. He could give a shrewd thrust himself, however. Dr. John Reid, the physiologist, had dissected two sharks, in which he could discover no sign of a brain; he was much perplexed. “How on earth could the animals live without it?” said he to Knox. “Not the least extraordinary,” was the answer. “If you go over to the Parliament House any morning you will see a great number of live sharks walking about without any brains whatever.” [Illustration: DR. ARCHIBALD PITCAIRN, From an Engraving after Sir John Medina]