Koosje tried to lift her; but the dead-weight was beyond her, young and strong as she was.  Then the rain and the wind came on again in fiercer gusts than before; the woman’s moans grew louder and louder, and what to do Koosje knew not.

She struggled on for the few steps that lay between her and the professor’s house, and then she rang a peal which resounded through the echoing passages, bringing Dortje, the other maid, running out; after the manner of her class, imagining all sorts of terrible catastrophes had happened.  She uttered a cry of relief when she perceived it was only Koosje, who, without vouchsafing any explanation, dashed past her and ran straight into the professor’s room.

“O professor!” she gasped out; but, between her efforts to remove the woman, her struggle with the elements, and her race down the passage, her breath was utterly gone.

The professor looked up from his book and his tea-tray in surprise.  For a moment he thought that Koosje, his domestic treasure, had altogether taken leave of her senses; for she was streaming with water, covered with mud, and head and cap were in a state of disorder, such as neither he nor any one else had ever seen them in since the last time she had been fished out of the Nieuwe Gracht.

“What is the matter, Koosje?” he asked, regarding her gravely over his spectacles.

“There’s a woman outside—­dying,” she panted, “I fell over her.”

“You had better try to get her in then,” the old gentleman said, in quite a relieved tone.  “You and Dortje must bring her in.  Dear, dear, poor soul! but it is a dreadful night.”

The old gentleman shivered as he spoke, and drew a little nearer to the tall white porcelain stove.

It was, as he had said a minute before, a terrible night.  He could hear the wind beating about the house and rattling about the casements and moaning down the chimneys; and to think any poor soul should be out on such a night, dying!  Heaven preserve others who might be belated or houseless in any part of the world!

He fell into a fit of abstraction,—­a habit not uncommon with learned men,—­wondering why life should be so different with different people; why he should be in that warm, handsome room, with its soft rich hangings and carpet, with its beautiful furniture of carved wood, its pictures, and the rare china scattered here and there among the grim array of skeletons which were his delight.  He wondered why he should take his tea out of costly and valuable Oriental china, sugar and cream out of antique silver, while other poor souls had no tea at all, and nothing to take it out of even if they had.  He wondered why he should have a lamp under his teapot that was a very marvel of art transparencies; why he should have every luxury, and this poor creature should be dying in the street amid the wind and the rain.  It was all very unequal.

It was very odd, the professor argued, leaning his back against the tall, warm stove; it was very odd indeed.  He began to feel that, grand as the study of osteology undoubtedly is, he ought not to permit it to become so engrossing as to blind him to the study of the greater philosophies of life.  His reverie was, however, broken by the abrupt reentrance of Koosje, who this time was a trifle less breathless than she had been before.