for scientific experiments; now shot partridges in the fields where
partridges had not been shot for years; and was as little in the picture
as his adventurous father, though he wore a broad-brimmed hat, smiling
the while at the pain it gave to the simple folk around him.

And yet once more the owner of the Cloistered House returned alone. The
blue-eyed lady was gone to her grave; the youth was abroad. This time he
came to die. He was found lying on the floor of his laboratory with a
broken retort in fragments beside him. With his servant, Luke Claridge
was the first to look upon him lying in the wreck of his last experiment,
a spirit-lamp still burning above him, in the grey light of a winter's
morning. Luke Claridge closed the eyes, straightened the body, and
crossed the hands over the breast which had been the laboratory of many
conflicting passions of life.

The dead man had left instructions that his body should be buried in the
Quaker graveyard, but Luke Claridge and the Elders prevented that--he had
no right to the privileges of a Friend; and, as the only son was afar,
and no near relatives pressed the late Earl's wishes, the ancient family
tomb in Ireland received all that was left of the owner of the Cloistered
House, which, with the estates in Ireland and the title, passed to the
wandering son.




CHAPTER II

THE GATES OF THE WORLD