"No; but I am one of his students," was the reply of the young man, who was now nearly satisfied of the intention of the stranger. "And, sure, I'm not far wrong thin, afther all." "And I may suit your purpose as well, perhaps." "Perhaps." "Well, speak out; don't be afraid. Have you got 'the thing?'" "Doun't know what you mean." "Ah! not an old hand, I perceive. You were never here before?" "No." "And don't know what to say?" "No." And the bashful man again turned his gloomy eyes to the ground, and didn't know what to do with those hands of his, which were not made for kid--perhaps for skin of another kind. And shouldn't this hardened student have been sorry for a man in such confusion; but he wasn't--nay, he had no sympathy with his refinement. "Why, man, don't you speak out?" he said impatiently. "There's some one coming through the Square there," was the reply, as the man looked furtively to a side. "Come in here, then," said the student, as he pulled him into a large room where there were three young men who acted as Knox's assistants. And there they were in the midst of a great number of coarse tables, with one large one in the middle, whereon were deposited--each having its portion--masses or lumps of some matter which could not be seen by reason of all of them being covered with pieces of cloth--once white, but now dirty gray, as if they had been soiled with clammy hands for weeks or months. Nor were these signs, though unmistakeable to even the neophyte, all that there spoke with a terrible eloquence of man's lowly destiny upon earth; ay, and of man's pride too, even that pride of science which makes such a fool of him in the very midst of the evidences of his corruption; for although the windows were opened a little way, the choking air, thick with gases which, in other circumstances, the free wind carries off to dissipate and purify in the storm, pressed heavily upon the lungs, so that even the uninitiated shrank with unfeigned feeling, as if he shuddered under an awe that was perfectly foreign to his rough nature. "Sure, and I'm among the dead," said the man, whom the reader will have discovered to be an Irishman; "and I have something ov that kind to----" "Sell," added one assistant sharply, as, in his scientific ardour, he anticipated the merchant. "Yes." And now the bashful man was relieved of his burden of shame, light or heavy as you please; but we verily say of _some_ weight, as we have him at the beginning of a career which made the world ring till the echoes might have disturbed the gods, and we know that he was not otherwise without feelings pertaining to humanity; nay, we know, and shall tell, that on ONE occasion pity suffused an eye that was destined to be oftener and longer red with the fires of cruelty than was ever before in the world's history the orb of a human being. "And what do you give for _wun_?" he whispered, as he sidled up to the ear of the young anatomist who had been speaking to him.