A Little Rebel

From the book:The professor, sitting before his untasted breakfast, is looking thevery picture of dismay. Two letters lie before him; one is in his hand, the other is on the table-cloth. Both are open; but of one, the opening lines - that tell of the death of his old friend - are all he has read; whereas he has read the other from start to finish, already three times. It is from the old friend himself, written a week before his death, and very urgent and very pleading. The professor has mastered its contents with ever-increasing consternation. Indeed so great a revolution has it created in his mind, that his face - (the index of that excellent part of him) - has, for the moment, undergone a complete change. Any ordinary acquaintance now entering the professor's rooms (and those acquaintances might be whittled down to quite a little few), would hardly have known him. For the abstraction that, as a rule, characterizes his features - the way he has of looking at you, as if he doesn't see you, that harasses the simple, and enrages the others - is all gone! Not a trace of it remains. It has given place to terror, open and unrestrained.