heat. It was one of those memorable years of English weather, when some
Provençal spell seems wreathed round the island in the northern sea, and
the grasshoppers chirp loudly as the cicadas, the hills smell of
rosemary, and white walls of the old farmhouses blaze in the sunlight
as if they stood in Arles or Avignon or famed Tarascon by Rhone.

Lucian's father was late at the station, and consequently Lucian bought
the _Confessions of an English Opium Eater_ which he saw on the
bookstall. When his father did drive up, Lucian noticed that the old trap
had had a new coat of dark paint, and that the pony looked advanced in
years.

"I was afraid that I should be late, Lucian," said his father, "though I
made old Polly go like anything. I was just going to tell George to put
her into the trap when young Philip Harris came to me in a terrible
state. He said his father fell down 'all of a sudden like' in the middle
of the field, and they couldn't make him speak, and would I please to
come and see him. So I had to go, though I couldn't do anything for the
poor fellow. They had sent for Dr. Burrows, and I am afraid he will find
it a bad case of sunstroke. The old people say they never remember such a
heat before."

The pony jogged steadily along the burning turnpike road, taking revenge
for the hurrying on the way to the station. The hedges were white with
the limestone dust, and the vapor of heat palpitated over the fields.
Lucian showed his _Confessions_ to his father, and began to talk of the
beautiful bits he had already found. Mr. Taylor knew the book well--had
read it many years before. Indeed he was almost as difficult to surprise
as that character in Daudet, who had one formula for all the chances of
life, and when he saw the drowned Academician dragged out of the river,