this was more in your line. This equatorial telescope and sliding roof are the gift of a former alumnus, left us by a provision in his will. I had hoped he would contribute something toward the chapel." His sigh, his abstracted look, showed how much more acceptable such a gift would have been. "Our present chapel in the main building is more fitted for an assembly hall or commons. Please God, we shall one day worship Him in a separate edifice more worthy of the purpose." He depressed the eye end of the telescope until the muzzle pointed upward above the parapet toward the sky. "The shed," he went on, "cannot be seen from below. I refused to allow an incongruous dome to be built here, but the sliding flat roof answers the purpose as well. You may find a senior who wishes to take astronomy, but I fear that most of your effort must be expended in drilling elementary mathematics into recalcitrant freshmen and sophomores. Your predecessor was a good mathematician as far as he went, but he did n't go as far as the stars. He tried it once, and fell, like Icarus, into the sea. In other words, he published something based upon insufficient data, I believe, which reflected no credit on the college. Then he naturally blamed the instrument."

"I have done something in astronomy," Leigh remarked, "and hope to do more."

"Well, I must leave you now," said his conductor. "You must come and dine with us soon. I would like you to meet my daughter. Say a week from to-night, at seven. I 'll leave you here, if you wish, to examine the telescope further. Doctor Renshaw will give you all necessary information in regard to your rooms, the entrance examinations, et cetera."

He had almost disappeared down the stairs as he said these words. Presently his head and shoulders arose once more above the roof.

"And here are the keys," he added. "What did you say your given name was?"

"Llewellyn," Leigh answered, surprised at the abruptness of the question.

"Ah," said the bishop, chuckling softly, "so it is. A good Welsh name, but Peter would be more appropriate under the circumstances."

With this little jest, whose significance Leigh was somewhat slow in grasping, he once more descended the stairs.

It was now high noon, and Leigh, left alone, paced up and down the large, sunny square, filled with appreciative thoughts of the bishop. So benign and humorous was the presence of the man that for some time his influence survived his actual departure and precluded other thoughts. In a reactionary glow of hope and confidence the young astronomer traversed the circumference of his lofty eyrie, pausing from time to time to gaze through one of the embrasures of the parapet upon the incomparable scene below. Accustomed as he was to the arid glory of California, he found a grateful refreshment in this far greener country. The tower was like a Pisgah, from which he gazed upon the promised land with eyes that wearied of the desert.

CHAPTER III

CARDINGTON

Leigh stood before the mirror in his bedroom and wrestled with his tie in preparation for the bishop's dinner. The week had brought in due course that procession of events which makes the opening of a college term a period of exceptional activity, but for the first time he had passed through the trial untaxed. He was slowly recovering from a sense of disappointment similar to that felt by a metropolitan at some Arcadian retreat, when he stands on the lonely platform at nightfall, listening to the trilling of the frogs increasing as the rumble of the train diminishes in the distance, and experiences a wild impulse to return at once to the fulness of life from which he has fled.

In the ample leisure afforded by his new position Leigh discovered an analogous consciousness of loss, with its consequent dismay. He had known many solitary hours when, as a student in the Lick Observatory, he had searched the skies for long months together; but the experience was overlaid by one more recent, so that now, with the varied life of a great university still ringing in his ears, he looked about and asked himself disconsolately if this were all. Had he plumbed the possibilities of the place in so short a time? And, if so, what was left for him in the year to come?

An answer to this question was suggested by his present occupation. If he could now and again leave the rarefied atmosphere of the hill for some such diversion as the one in prospect, he would return better able to make good use of that solitude in which real achievement is shaped.

As yet there seemed small chance that such diversions would become sufficiently numerous to interfere with his work. He had met the other nine members of the faculty, and while he found them courteous, he became at once aware that their attitude toward him as a newcomer was one of indifference. The smallness of their number did not operate to draw them more closely together, as might have been supposed. Each returned to the city at the end of his day's work, and was lost to view in his own peculiar circle. Some time, no doubt, their social obligation to the new professor in the tower would become imperative, but the time was not yet. Meanwhile, he felt himself regarded warily, an attitude which to his friendly Western nature seemed to betoken a vague disapprobation. He did not realise that there was nothing personal in this aloofness, except in so far as he personified a larger life, whose hopeful outlook stirred in more cabined natures an unacknowledged resentment. Here he found no remnant of the traditional hospitality of the borderland. The conditions of this old community of specialised interests were the opposite of those he had encountered in the West, where a stranger was welcomed on the slim credentials of his appearance.

Leigh had been told that the road to promotion led through the small college, and he had taken that road hopefully; but now he felt like one who had drifted into an eddy below the bank, while the great stream of the national educational tendency went tossing and foaming past.

These unaccustomed circumstances gave an unwonted significance to the simple occupation in which he was employed, and focussed his mind expectantly upon the event which, in the fuller life he had left, would have been accepted as a matter of course.

His preparations completed, he donned his overcoat and hat, and stood looking from his window over the valley toward the west. The sun was setting in an angry splendour that threatened storms, Even as he looked, the wind attained increased velocity and began to whine and whistle about the solid masonry of the tower. Leigh drew in the heavy, leaded panes against the possible beating of the rain. He passed his fingers lightly down the cold stone casement, thinking of its immense thickness and of the beauty of its careful cutting. Never had he lived in such rooms. His was an habitat fit for a prince of the Middle Ages, and some glimpse of the fascination which this secluded life might come to possess was given him at that moment. Evidently, Professor Cardington, his neighbour across the hall, had felt it and succumbed; else how could a man of his extraordinary talent have remained so long buried, as it were, from the world?

Revolving this mystery in his mind, he passed into his sitting-room on the eastern side of the building. It was pleasant to think that Cardington was to accompany him to the bishop's, but as it was still too soon to call for him, he stood for a few moments looking down upon the campus. The giant shadow of the Hall had now crept to the verge of the plateau. There was no human figure on its bleak expanse, but the small trees which found scant nourishment in the rock beneath swayed gently in the broken wind, like a line of sentries marking time. In the centre of the line the flagpole sprang up, thin and white, lifting the stars and stripes into the lurid light above the shadow. He could hear the whipping of the halyards