The discomfited lover fled from the house, and sought the treasurer’s palace. It had vanished with all its monsters. Long did he roam the city ere he mixed again with the crowd, which an old meteorologist was addressing energetically.
“I ask you one thing,” he was saying. “Will it ever rain again?”
“Certainly not,” replied a geologist and a metaphysician together. “Rain being an agent of Time in the production of change, there can be no place for it under the present dispensation.”
“Then will not the crops be burned up? Will the fruits mature? Are they not withering already? What of wells and rivers, and the mighty sea itself? Who will feed your cattle? And who will feed you?”
“This concerns us,” said the butchers and bakers.
“Us also,” added the fishmongers.
“I always thought,” said a philosopher, “that this phenomenon must be the work of some malignant wizard.”
“Show us the wizard that we may slay him,” roared the mob.
Leonora had been communicative, and the student was immediately identified by twenty persons. The lock of hair was found upon him, and was held up in sight of the multitude.
“Kill him!”