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?

Revolvin