the town of Dartford. Edgar Ormskirk was the son of a scholar. The latter,
a man of independent means, who had always had a preference for study and
investigation rather than for taking part in active pursuits, had, since
the death of his young wife, a year after the birth of his son, retired
altogether from the world and devoted himself to study. He had given up
his comfortable home, standing on the heights of Highgate--that being in
too close proximity to London to enable him to enjoy the seclusion that he
desired--and had retired to a small estate near Dartford.

Educated at Oxford, he had gone to Padua at his father's death, which
happened just as he left the university, and had remained at that seat of
learning for five years. There he had spent the whole of his income in the
purchase of manuscripts. The next two years were passed at Bologna and
Pisa, and he there collected a library such as few gentlemen of his time
possessed. Then Mr. Ormskirk had returned to England and settled at
Highgate, and two years later married the daughter of a neighbouring
gentleman, choosing her rather because he felt that he needed someone to
keep his house in order, than from any of the feeling that usually
accompanies such unions. In time, however, he had come to love her, and
her loss was a very heavy blow to him. It was the void that he felt in his
home as much as his desire for solitude, that induced him to leave
Highgate and settle in the country.

Here, at least, he had no fear of intrusive neighbours, or other
interruptions to his studies. The news from London seldom reached his
ears, and he was enabled to devote himself entirely to his experiments.
Like many other learned men of his age, it was to chemistry that he
chiefly turned his attention. His library comprised the works of almost
every known writer on the subject, and he hoped that he might gain an
immortal reputation by discovering one or both of the great secrets then