veral, was afterward revived to win a permanent
place in his memory when he came to know the girl as Lena Harpster; for
her part in the drama of the immediate future was destined to be
connected strangely with his own.

Seven o'clock found him again upon the tower, setting the telescope in
order and preparing for his guests. He could scarcely expect them for
an hour, but he walked restlessly about the enclosure of the parapet,
breathing gratefully the cool night air. The lamp within his cabin
shone dimly through the small windows upon his promenade. Beyond the
battlements to the east, the evening star, which the Roman poet called
Noctifer, began to bicker and brighten in the serene sky, and the last
vestige of the sun's afterglow had now faded from the west. It was
already as dark as a summer midnight. Small and continuous sounds came
floating up from the city beyond. Immediately below he heard the
occasional voices of students passing on the stone walk, and from the
meadows on the west came the melancholy hoot of an owl.

Accustomed though he had been to lonely vigils, he was impressed by the
juxtaposition of the minute and the infinitely vast, of the transient
and the eternal. He stood looking for some time at the track of the
Milky Way, till his gaze plunged into one of those abysms of blackness
where no star shines, and the ghastliness of the distance suggested
flooded in upon him. This lost and shivering sensation, when the world
itself seems to shrink away and send the watcher spinning into the
void, is vouchsafed to the astronomer only at rare moments, and from it
an escape is offered by exact and intricate calculations. Even figures
that climb into the millions, incomprehensible as they may be, offer
some consolation to microscopic man; but when this consolation is
withdrawn, as it was withdrawn from Leigh for the moment, he stands, as
it were, annihilated by immensity.

Lost in this mood, the voice of Emmet came to his ears with a shock, a
mere succession of sounds with scarce a meaning.

"Hello, professor! Are you up here star-gazing? I saw the door open
at the foot of the stairs, and followed my nose till I found you,
though it's a wonder I did n't break it, for my matches gave out two
flights below."

The incongruity of this interruption was almost as great as a shout of
laughter at a funeral, and Leigh experienced a reaction akin to
hilarity.

"I 'm glad to see you," he returned, "for I ha