Arthur is ambitious; even while his mind is wrapt in the mazes of a scientific problem, he thinks of his widowed mother and orphan sisters far away in the great village near Seneca lake, and his pulse beats quicker, as he looks forward to the day when their ears shall be greeted by the tidings of his world-wide fame. For he has determined to be a surgeon, and a master in his art; he has the will and the genius; he will accomplish what he wills. He raises his eyes from his book,--they are glittering with the clear light of intense thought,--and unconsciously begins to think aloud. "Do the dead return? Are the dead indeed _dead_? You have nailed down the coffin-lid; you have seen the coffin as it sunk into the grave; you have heard the rattling of the clod,--but is that all? Is the beloved one whom you have given to the grave, indeed _dead_, or only more truly living in a new body, formed of refined matter, invisible to our gross organs? Is that which we call soul, only the result of a particular organization of gross matter, or is it the real, eternal substance of which all other matter is but the servant and the expression? Do the dead return? Do those whose faces we have seen for the last time, ere the coffin-lid closed upon them forever, ever come back to us, clad in spiritual bodies, and addressing us, not through our external organs, but by directly _impressing_ that _divine substance_ in us, which is like unto them,--that which we call our SOUL?" It was a thought which for ages has made the hearts of the noblest and truest of our race, alternately combat with despair, and swell with hope,--that thought which seeks to unvail the mystery of Life and Death, disclose the tie which connects perishable matter with eternal mind, and lift the curtain which hides from the present, the other world. Arthur felt the vast thought gather all his soul into its embrace. But his meditations were interrupted by the opening of the door, and the two men,--whom we saw dismount from the sleigh,--entered the room of the student, bearing in their arms the burden, which was covered by folds of coarse canvas. Very ungainly men they were, with their brawny forms wrapped in huge gray overcoats, adorned with white buttons, and their harsh visages half concealed by their coarse fur caps. They came into the room without a word. "O, you have come," said Arthur, as if he recognized persons by no means strangers to him. "Have you the particular subject which the doctor desired you to procure?"