"Hullo," Lowell clucked to himself, quite
satisfied.
The Professor reached the boulder bordering
the fence. Propping one foot up, he raised
himself above the fence and leaped, plunging
onto the sandy patch where Chief Justice
Artemus Healey had met his demise. Lowell
carried a glass case to abduct the specimen of
insect responsible for assailing him. As his
heavy boots hit the ground in a cloud of sand,
Lowell saw from the corner of his eye a
slender figure crouched on a raised rock. But
the image as it was burned into Lowell's mind
was fleeting, for a heavy blow smashed into
the back of Professor Lowell's head almost at
once, sending him crashing face down into the
rough sand.
Immediately, a small troupe of the speckled
brown insects, and lean scorpions, climbed
from under rocks to inspect the new flesh. One
started immediately to prod against Lowell's
low-cut beard.
"Lowell!" a voice cried from the mountain trail.
An insect scrambled away from a wide,
comfortable berth of Lowell's beard. The
attacker pivoted at the sound of the voice and
fled, as the young Harvard student hurried to
the side of his fallen teacher.
When James Russell Lowell came to, he found
Edmund Sheldon tending to his head with a
handkerchief, and for a moment after
recognizing the freshman Lowell believed he
must have been among the disordered
book-shelves of his Elmwood study, conducting
a Dante class. When the sweeping silence and
earthy chill of the mountainside reminded the
poet otherwise, he abruptly sprang to his
feet.
"Oh, but stay still, Professor!" Sheldon
pleaded.
"What has happened?"
"Do you not remember?" Sheldon asked.
"Yes, I was jumped! Did you see who it was?"
"I am sorry to say I did not, Professor,"
Sheldon said with a faint blush. "I came upon
you at the moment you collapsed to the ground,
Professor Lowell, like a sail whose mast has
cracked in two (as Dante says). I called out
to you. Then I saw a figure standing above
you, seeming more ghost than man; seeing my
approach he quickly bolted. I thought to give
chase."
"You thought? You should have flattened the
fiend like an oyster out of season!" cried
Lowell.
"Well, once I considered your condition,
Professor Lowell, I decided it best to
minister to your injuries, and remove from you
the strange insects and crawlers that had
gathered on your clothes and face."
"Sheldon... my what a daze it all is to me!
Whatever were you doing on the mountain to
begin with?"
"I am rooming with a near relative in
Stockbridge for a few days, sir, and saw you
from a distance starting up the mountain while
I was out on my cousin's old horse. I gave
chase to greet you, but could not catch up -
that is, until the moment when I witnessed the
attack!"
"But did you see the scoundrel who did this,
Sheldon? It is more important than you could
ever know. Pray tell me yes!" Lowell grabbed
Sheldon's wrist, and noticed the blood which
had drenched the young man's handkerchief.
Only at that moment did the gash on the back
of Lowell's head begin to throb.
Sheldon shook his head sadly. "Never have I
seen someone run so swiftly as that slim
fellow, Professor Lowell, and in a blink
disappear entirely from sight."
