'Nobody ever comes near the column,--or, as it's called here, Rings-Hill
Speer,' he continued; 'and when I first came up it nobody had been here
for thirty or forty years. The staircase was choked with daws' nests and
feathers, but I cleared them out.' 'I understood the column was always kept locked?' 'Yes, it has been so. When it was built, in 1782, the key was given to
my great-grandfather, to keep by him in case visitors should happen to
want it. He lived just down there where I live now.' He denoted by a nod a little dell lying immediately beyond the ploughed land which environed them.
'He kept it in his bureau, and as the bureau descended to my grandfather,
my mother, and myself, the key descended with it. After the first thirty
or forty years, nobody 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 dark, and the stars came out, and
that night I resolved to be an astronomer. I came back here from school
several months ago, and I mean to be an astronomer still.' He lowered his voice, and added: 'I aim at nothing less than the dignity and office of Astronomer Royal,
if I live. Perhaps I shall not live.' 'I don't see why you should suppose that,' said she. 'How long are you going to make this your observatory?' 'About a year longer--till I have obtained a practical familiarity with the heavens. Ah, if I only had a good equatorial!' 'What is that?' 'A proper instrument for my pursuit. But time is short, and science is infinite,--how infinite only those who study astronomy fully realize,--and perhaps I shall be worn out before I make my mark.' She seemed to be greatly struck by the odd mixture in him of scientific earnestness and melancholy mistrust of all things human. Perhaps it was owing to the nature of his studies.
'You are often on this tower alone at night?' she said.
'Yes; at this time of the year particularly, and while there is no moon.
I observe from seven or eight till about two in the morning, with a view
to my great work on variable stars. But with such a telescope as
this--well, I must put up with it!' 'Can you see Saturn's ring and Jupiter's moons?' He said drily that he could manage to do that, not without some contempt
for the state of her knowledge.