adowed, melancholy, an austere nurse of the
striving spirit of man, with menace in its mountain-rack, in the
rushing voice of its winds and torrents.

Here, in a small, plain cottage, stone-walled, stone-roofed, looking
over the wide and deep hollow of a stream--a beck in the local
language--which at this point makes a sounding cataract on its course
from the great moor above, lived Jerome Otway. It had been his home for
some ten years. He lived as a man of small but sufficient means, amid
very plain household furniture, and with no sort of social pretence.
With him dwelt his wife, and one maidservant.

On an evening of midsummer, still and sunny, the old man sat among his
books; open before him the great poem of Dante. His much-lined face,
austere in habitual expression, yet with infinite possibilities of
radiance in the dark eyes, of tenderness on the mobile lips, was
crowned with hair which had turned iron-grey but remained wonderfully
thick and strong; the moustache and beard, only a slight growth, were
perfectly white. He had once been of more than average stature; now his
bent shoulders and meagre limbs gave him an appearance of shortness,
whilst he suffered on the score of dignity by an excessive disregard of
his clothing. He sat in a round-backed wooden chair at an ordinary
table, on which were several volumes ranked on end, a large blotter,
and an inkstand. The room was exclusively his, two bookcases and a few
portraits on the walls being almost the only other furniture; but at
this moment it was shared by Mrs. Otway, who, having some sort of
woman's work on her lap, sat using her fingers and her tongue with
steady diligence. She looked about forty, had a colourless but healthy
face, not remarkable for charm, and was dressed as a sober,
self-respecting gentlewoman. In her accents sounded nothing harsh,
nothing vehement; she talked quietly, without varied inflections, as if
thoughtfully expounding an agreeable theme; such talk might well have
inclined a disinterested hearer to somnolence. But her husband's
visage, and his movements, betokened no such peaceful tendency; every
moment he grew more fidgety, betrayed a stronger irritation.

"I suppose," Mrs. Otway was saying, "there are persons who live without
any religious conscience. It seems very strange; one would think that
no soul could be at rest in utter disregard of its Maker, in complete
neglect of the plainest duties of a creature endowed with human
in