against the pole; but suddenly the sound ceased, the flag began to flutter downward till its colours were quenched, and only the gilded ball above now caught the sun's last rays. Straining his gaze, he saw the janitor fold the flag on the grass and carry it within. Then darkness seemed to fall like a canopy, beneath which the lights of the city trembled into view.

A moment later he stood in Cardington's doorway, and looked with relief upon the sight presented to his eyes. The flickering fire in the grate, the bewildering congeries of books, statues, and furniture, were doubly homelike by contrast with Leigh's late vision of the descending night without. The old caretaker of the tower was wont to say that she never knew a neater man than Professor Cardington, or a more disorderly room than his. The accumulation of articles in the room seemed to symbolise the owner's mental furniture, while his personal neatness was a habit acquired during his stay at West Point, where he had once occupied the chair of a modern language. There was a suggestion of the soldier also in his unbending back as he sat at his desk, so absorbed in his work that he did not at first look up to see who had answered his invitation to enter.

The face he turned upon his visitor presently was stern and grey in effect, like that of a man who has seen service. His blue eyes, though pale in tone, were brilliant, as if the intellect behind them burned with steady intensity and force. Nature had concealed his true quality behind a baffling mask, for there was not a line in his face to hint of his sensitive spirit, or of the humorous moods that swept over him in unexpected gusts. Now his aspect brightened, as from a warmth within.

"Come in, Mr. Leigh," he cried cheerily. "Come in. I thought it was some student who wished to ask me what use there was in studying Latin. I am just outlining an article on the Roman Forum for the new encyclopaedia. You might like to see Boni's latest contribution, and the photographs I took myself last summer."

He reached for his meerschaum pipe, and paused to gaze with a smoker's admiration at the red-brown perfection of the polished bowl.

"But you have n't forgotten the dinner?" Leigh asked, perceiving that the other was preparing to settle back in his chair for one of those discursive talks in which his guests delighted.

"The dinner! I had quite forgotten it." And he put down the pipe with evident reluctance. "Such is the power of preoccupation."

"We 're a tall set of men here," Leigh said, as the professor rose to his feet. "You and the bishop and I would measure eighteen feet or more, placed one above the other."

"Pelion on Ossa!" Cardington cried. "How much more impressive it makes us seem than if you had merely stated that each of us was six feet tall! It takes an astronomer to calculate great distances. I quite compassionate those little fellows, our colleagues." His eyes twinkled behind his rimless spectacles. "Just amuse yourself with these photographs awhile. Not in your line, perhaps, but interesting to us glow-worms that flit about in ruinous places. I 'll be with you in a few moments."

Even from the room beyond he continued the conversation in his own odd manner, passing to antipodal subjects by paths of association beyond the guess of an imagination less vagrant than his own. With Cardington conversation was a fine art. He loved the adequate or picturesque word as a miner loves an ingot of gold, yet he was able to display his linguistic stores without incurring the charge of pedantry, much as certain women can carry without offence clothes that would smother a more insignificant personality.

"We still have a few minutes to spare," he announced, when he presently reappeared. "Now, which will you have, a Roman Catholic, or an Episcopalian, or a Presbyterian beverage,—Benedictine, port wine, or whiskey?"

Leigh's mood expanded in response to the hospitality. Here was a little fling of the spirit of which he stood in need, a promise of comradeship that was all the more welcome from the fact that his other colleagues had kept him waiting in the vestibule of their regard.

"I'll drink your health in a little whiskey," he replied with alacrity.

"Quite right," Cardington commented, producing a bottle of Scotch. "I hope you 'll find that this has the true Calvinistic flavour. And here's to you likewise. May you yet discover the length, the depth, and the uses of all the canals of Mars." Over the rim of his glass his eyes began to brighten in a manner which his guest already knew to be a prophecy of something good. "That was an excellent jest of the bishop's you told me of yesterday, calling you Peter when he handed you the keys of the door that leads to heaven. Now what did you say in reply?"

"Nothing," Leigh confessed. "He didn't give me fair warning of what was coming."

"Then you lost the opportunity of your life. If you had only said, 'Thank you, my Lord!' Even a Yankee bishop would have had no objection to being my-lorded, you know. Ah, that would have been the retort courteous, and the story is incomplete without it. By your kind permission I shall tell it with that addendum."

"A footnote by Professor Cardington," Leigh suggested.

"No, no, not at all. I 'll work it into the text as your own. The story must go down in history along with the classic jest in regard to the position of the statue's outstretched palm. The bishop told you that, no doubt, anticipating my own good offices."

"It may interest you to know," he went on, as they began to descend the stairs, "that you are to meet a very charming young lady to-night. Miss Wycliffe is a very remarkable young woman in some respects. Have you yet had the pleasure of making her acquaintance?"

"What is she like?" Leigh asked, wondering whether the answer would suggest in any way the young woman he had met the morning of his arrival.

"I shall not allow my enthusiasm to betray me into an inadequate description," Cardington declared. "I could no more make the subject clear to you than you could explain to me the nth degree of x+z, if there is any such expression in algebra, which I should n't be surprised to discover is the case."

"Then I shall have to possess my soul in patience," Leigh answered, with apparent indifference.

When they emerged from the shadow of the Hall, and plunged between the lines of maples, they were obliged to go in single file, for the narrowness of the way. The young mathematician glanced at the last melancholy glow of the sunset which spread out in a faint, fan-shaped aurora above a dun rampart of clouds. His love of nature was no less keen than his appreciation of people and events. The mathematician and the poet held alternate sway over him. This di-psychic quality was evidenced by the rapidity with which the expression of his eye would frequently change from cold calculation to a certain rapt observation, as if he looked up from a complicated problem to contemplate a glimpse of blue distance. Thus it was that he appreciated to the full the panorama spread out before him, though his mind was intent upon another subject; or rather, it might be said that the sight gave warmth and colouring to his thought. He had passed the place of that first meeting several times during the week, and never without a vivid remembrance of it. If the young woman who had made such an impression upon him were the bishop's daughter, why had he not seen her in the interim, at the initial service in the chapel when visitors were present, upon the grounds, or in the streets of the city? Perhaps she had been away, and had just returned. At all events, he should know before long.

Of one thing he felt assured. If Miss Wycliffe turned out to be some one else, she would hold no interest for him, not even if she possessed all the indescribable qualities of which Cardington had hinted. Speculating upon this possibility, he scarcely listened now to the words of his companion swinging on ahead, as they came brokenly to his ears in