bs the sun shone freely, a gleaming landau came to a pause on the crest of a hill in Wessex. The spot was where the old Melche
twenty. She was looking through the opening afforded by a field-gate at the undulating stretch o
ered with fir-trees. The trees were all of one size and age, so that their tips assumed the precise curve of the hill they grew upon. This pine-clad protuberance was yet further marked out from the general landscape by
road leading nea
than where we ar
d after a moment. And the
me carriage, passed that spot again. Her e
our way home through that field, so as to get near t
n there by inching and pinching, and so get across by Five-and-Twenty Acres, all being well. Bu
indifferently. 'Remember it,
sting on the segmental hill, the blue trees that muffled it, a
in other respects much as they had been before. The familiar shape of the column seemed to remind her that at last an opportunity for a close insp
h impracticable ground. The drive to the base of the hill was tedious and jerky, and on reaching it she alighted, directing that the carria
substantial memorial of her husband's great-grandfather, a respectable officer who had fallen in the American war, and the reason of her lack of interest was partly owing to her relations with this husband, of which more anon. It was little beyond the sheer desire for something to do-the chronic desire of her curiously lonely life-that had br
axon field of Witenagemote,-with remains of an outer and an inner vallum, a winding path leading up between their overlapping ends by an easy ascent. The spikelets from th
cked in seconds, like inverted pendulums; while some boughs and twigs rubbed the pillar's sides, or occasionally clicked in catching each other. Below the level of their summits the masonry was lichen-stained and mildewed, for the sun never pierced that moaning cloud of blue-black vegetation. Pads of moss grew
des of trunks, and thence horizontally away. The fact of the plantation being an island in the midst of an arable plain sufficiently accounted for this lack of visitors. Few unaccustomed to such places can be aware of the insulating effect of ploughed ground, whe
was all washed from the wood, and down the decaying surface of the boards liquid rust from the nails and hinges had run in red stains. Over the doo
tokened forgetfulness. Probably not a dozen people within the district knew the name of the person commemorated, while perhaps not a soul remembered whether the column were hollow
knew the spot, despite her surmises. But as the paper had nothing on it no clue was afforded; yet feeling herself the proprietor of the column and of all around it her self-assertiveness was sufficient to lead her on. The stair
that stood before him on a tripod. This sort of presence was unexpected, and the lady started back into the shade of the opening. The only effect produced
because no deep felicity is likely to arise from the condition, or from any other reason, to say in these days that a youth is beautiful is not to award him that amount of credit which the expression would have carried with it if he had lived in the times of the Classical Dictionary. So much, indeed, is the reverse the case that the assertion creates an awkwardness in saying anyt
head he wore a black velvet skull-cap, leaving to view below it a curly margin
ar enough removed from virgin delicacy, and suggests plenty of sun and wind as its accompaniment. His features were sufficiently straight in the contou
a shade, and her complexion showed the richness demanded as a support to these decided features. As she continued to look at the pretty fellow before her, apparently so far abstracted into some speculative
her attention for ever, and as he made no further signs of m
?-something happ
!' he automatically murmu
ha
one in
sider the weight of that even
difference to us
ned to the consciousness that somebody unusua
ht it was my relative come to look aft
city of influence as might have been expected between a dark lady a
errupt your obser
ife. The expression that settled on him was one of awe. Not unaptly might it have been said that he was worshipping the sun. Among the various intensities of that worship which have prevailed since the first intelligent
is an event that is witnessed only about once in t
e centre of which the blazing globe seemed to be laid bare to its core. It was a pee
id. Then he looked again; till wondering who her
t is not cloudy, an
The heavens must be bea
ather more
tirely taken possess
tir
mn,' she said, wit
ntine, wife of the absent
dy Const
ship's. But will you allow me to rent
in the interests of science it is advisable that you con
ly an
he interior, and showed her some ingenio
continued; 'and when I first came up it nobody had been here for thirty or forty ye
e column was alw
ven to my great-grandfather, to keep by him in case visitors sho
l lying immediately beyond the p
obody ever asked for it. One day I saw it, lying rusty in its niche, and, finding that it belonged to this column, I took it and came up. I stayed here till it was
his voice
ity and office of Astronomer Royal,
that,' said she. 'How long are you g
d a practical familiarity with the heave
is t
ce is infinite,-how infinite only those who study astronomy fully
f scientific earnestness and melancholy mistrust of all thi
this tower alone a
e from seven or eight till about two in the morning, with a view to my great work
urn's ring and J
to do that, not without some cont
any planet or star
y Constantine, I will show you any number. I
t vary so much-sometimes evening stars, sometimes morning stars, somet
rance of the realities of astronomy is so satisfactory t
h to be en
ution you
on the subject,
, in
ad of looking longer at the sun, watched her diminishing towards the distant fence, behind which waited the carriage. When in the midst of the field, a dark spot on an area of brown, there crossed her path a moving figure, whom it was as difficult to distinguish from the earth he trod as the caterpillar from its leaf, by reas
the encrusted form of the word Amos, to adopt the phrase of philologists). The
os Fry, I think
the eaves of your ladyship's outbuildings, in a manner of speaking
old house behind
tin, my lady, a
er father nor
ngle one,
as he ed
alk like the day of Pentecost; which is a wonderful thing for a simple boy, and his mother only the plainest ciphering woman in the world. Warborne Grammar School-that's where 'twas
Constantine. 'It was bef
this homespun woman the toppermost folk wouldn't speak to his wife. Then he dropped a cuss or two, and said he'd no longer get his living by curing their twopenny souls o' such d--- nonsense as that (excusing my common way), and he took to farming straightway, and then 'a dropped down dead in a nor'-west thunderstorm; it being said-hee-hee!-that Master God was in tantrums wi'en for leaving his service
g, should be linked, on the maternal side, with a local agricultural family through his father's matrimonial eccentricity. A more attractive feature in the case was that the same youth, so capable of being ruined by fla