his handkerchief, and having twisted off a good length, and put it in his
pocket to show his father. Mr. Taylor was almost interested when he came
in from his evening stroll about the garden and saw the specimen.

"Where did you manage to come across that, Lucian?" he said. "You haven't
been to Caermaen, have you?"

"No. I got it in the Roman fort by the common."

"Oh, the twyn. You must have been trespassing then. Do you know what it
is?"

"No. I thought it looked different from the common nettles."

"Yes; it's a Roman nettle--_arctic pilulifera_. It's a rare plant.
Burrows says it's to be found at Caermaen, but I was never able to come
across it. I must add it to the _flora_ of the parish."

Mr. Taylor had begun to compile a _flora_ accompanied by a _hortus
siccus_, but both stayed on high shelves dusty and fragmentary. He put
the specimen on his desk, intending to fasten it in the book, but the
maid swept it away, dry and withered, in a day or two.

Lucian tossed and cried out in his sleep that night, and the awakening in
the morning was, in a measure, a renewal of the awakening in the fort.
But the impression was not so strong, and in a plain room it seemed all
delirium, a phantasmagoria. He had to go down to Caermaen in the
afternoon, for Mrs. Dixon, the vicar's wife, had "commanded" his presence
at tea. Mr. Dixon, though fat and short and clean shaven, ruddy of face,
was a safe man, with no extreme views on anything. He "deplored" all