It was Sunday morning and there would be no one there, which was so much the better. He wanted to get this straightened out. He had his head down all the way over to the university, partly because his eyes bothered him and partly because he was thinking hard. The trouble had evidently been coming on yesterday. He stopped short. That trick Parkman told him about! But of course--moving on a little--that could not have anything to do with this. He had no recollection--he was very sure--then he walked faster, and the lines of his mouth told that he was troubled. When he reached the laboratory he began immediately upon the microscopic examination. He hoped he could get at it through that, for the culture process meant a long wait. But after fifteen minutes of careful work the "smear" proved negative. There remained then only the longer route of the culture. He did not begin upon that immediately. He sat there trying to think back to just what it was he had been doing Friday afternoon. The latter part of the afternoon he had been sitting here by this table. That was the time he was so buoyed up--getting so fine a light on the thing. It was the cancer problem then--but in the nature of things nothing could have happened with that. But there were always other things--all those things known to the pathological laboratory. He turned around toward the culture oven, opened the outer door and through the inner door of glass looked in at the row of tubes. He was trying to recall what it was he had been working with the earlier part of Friday afternoon. He knew now; one of the tubes had brought it to him. Yes, he knew now, and within him there was a pause, and a stillness. Right over there was where he sat preparing some cultures. There were two things with which he had been working;--again a pause, and a stillness. One of them could not make any serious difference; he went that far firmly, and then his heart seemed to stand quite still, waiting for his thought to go on. But he did not go on; there was a little convulsive clutching of his consciousness, and a return, with acclaim, to the fact that _that_ could not make any serious difference. He clung there; he would not leave that; doggedly, defiantly, insistently, all-embracingly he affirmed that _that_ could not make any serious difference. It was without opening his thought to anything further that he got out his things and began preparing the culture.