ered that it was one thing to take observations
on Mount Hamilton, where no other claims occupied part of his time, and
quite another to watch by night and teach by day. The bishop was right
in saying that his chief occupation must needs be the teaching of
elementary mathematics to undergraduates. For any satisfactory
results, prolonged observations must be made from twilight to dawn, and
such periods of wakefulness were impossible when he must present
himself before a class at nine o'clock in the morning. Not that this
was necessary each day. His hours were irregular, but the morning
classes were sufficiently numerous to break up the continuity of his
observations, and to render their results unsure.

In this quandary, he ought, perhaps, to have abandoned his purpose and
to have taken up some problem in pure mathematics, but here the
perversity of human nature interposed. The forbidden, or at least
difficult, road was the one he desired to travel, and he could not make
up his mind to turn back, though he saw no prospect of going far.
Instead, he began to make a few preliminary observations at random, and
enjoyed the sight of the familiar constellations as one enjoys a return
to old faces and associations. For the present he swept the skies
leisurely, feasting on the infinite wonders which no consuetude could
render commonplace. He longed for some unusual phenomenon in the
sidereal tracts, a comet, or a temporary star, one of those strange
wanderers that appear for a time, attain a brief and vivid maximum, and
vanish into the darkness from which they have emerged. But only about
a score of such objects had been credibly reported in historic times,
and he searched the thoroughfare of the Milky Way, the region in which
they were wont to appear, with small hope of reward.

One morning he received a letter from Miss Wycliffe, in which she named
that night, if the skies were clear, for the observation she had
mentioned at the dinner. He had almost forgotten the wish she then
expressed in the greater importance she seemed to attach to her plan to
help Emmet. Now he was surprised to discover that this matter, which
had put him to such pains, had apparently slipped from her mind
altogether. It gave him a conception of the multiplicity of her
interests. It was as if she could not attend to all her charitable
plans in person, but, having chosen a responsible agent, she dismissed
the subject from her mind. Nor was he