her, as a woman, the most curious feature in the afternoon's
incident was that this lad, of striking beauty, scientific
attainments, and cultivated bearing, 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 flattery,
blandishment, pleasure, even gross prosperity, should be at present
living on in a primitive Eden of unconsciousness, with aims towards
whose accomplishment a Caliban shape would have been as effective as
his own.



II

Swithin St. Cleeve lingered on at his post, until the more sanguine
birds of the plantation, already recovering from their midwinter
anxieties, piped a short evening hymn to the vanishing sun.

The landscape was gently concave; with the exception of tower and
hill there were no points on which late rays might linger; and hence
the dish-shaped ninety acres of tilled land assumed a uniform hue of
shade quite suddenly. The one or two stars that appeared were
quickly clouded over, and it was soon obvious that there would be no
sweeping the heavens that night. After tying a piece of tarpaulin,
which had once seen service on his maternal grandfather's farm, over
all the apparatus around him, he went down the stairs in the dark,
and locked the door.

With the key in his pocket he descended through the underwood on the