She could content herself no longer with fruitless visits to the column,

and when the rain had a little abated she walked to the nearest hamlet,

and in a conversation with the first old woman she met contrived to lead

up to the subject of Swithin St. Cleeve by talking about his grandmother.

'Ah, poor old heart; 'tis a bad time for her, my lady!' exclaimed the

dame.

'What?' 'Her grandson is dying; and such a gentleman through and through!' 'What! . . . Oh, it has something to do with that dreadful discovery!' 'Discovery, my lady?' She left the old woman with an evasive answer, and with a breaking heart

crept along the road. Tears brimmed into her eyes as she walked, and by

the time that she was out of sight sobs burst forth tumultuously.

'I am too fond of him!' she moaned; 'but I can't help it; and I don't

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care if it's wrong,--I don't care!' Without further considerations as to who beheld her doings she

instinctively went straight towards Mrs. Martin's. Seeing a man coming

she calmed herself sufficiently to ask him through her dropped veil how

poor Mr. St. Cleeve was that day. But she only got the same reply: 'They

say he is dying, my lady.' When Swithin had parted from Lady Constantine, on the previous

Ash-Wednesday, he had gone straight to the homestead and prepared his

account of 'A New Astronomical Discovery.' It was written perhaps in too

glowing a rhetoric for the true scientific tone of mind; but there was no

doubt that his assertion met with a most startling aptness all the

difficulties which had accompanied the received theories on the phenomena

attending those changeable suns of marvellous systems so far away. It

accounted for the nebulous mist that surrounds some of them at their

weakest time; in short, took up a position of probability which has never

yet been successfully assailed.

The papers were written in triplicate, and carefully sealed up with blue

wax. One copy was directed to Greenwich, another to the Royal Society,

another to a prominent astronomer. A brief statement of the essence of

the discovery was also prepared for the leading daily paper.

He considered these documents, embodying as they did two years of his

constant thought, reading, and observation, too important to be entrusted

for posting to the hands of a messenger; too important to be sent to the

sub-post-office at hand. Though the day was wet, dripping wet, he went

on foot with them to a chief office, five miles off, and registered them.

Quite exhausted by the walk, after his long night-work, wet through, yet

sustained by the sense of a great achievement, he called at a

bookseller's for the astronomical periodicals to which he subscribed;

then, resting for a short time at an inn, he plodded his way homewards,

reading his papers as he went, and planning how to enjoy a repose on his

laurels of a week or more.




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