solitariness of his life.

What was then communicated I can repeat only in the first person. The
pathetic earnestness of the speaker imprinted on my memory the very
phrases that he used; there can be few verbal changes as they now flow
from the pen.

II.

NARRATIVE OF THE REVEREND CHARLES CLIFTON.

I am indebted for education to a bachelor uncle, who, after our great
bereavement, received at his house an infant sister and myself. I was at
that time about twelve years old. My relative enjoyed a handsome
annuity, which he spent with the utmost liberality. As I was rather a
thoughtful, though not very studious boy, it was determined that I
should go to college. I entered with some difficulty soon after my
seventeenth birthday,--an age somewhat later than the average at that
time.

Two years before me in college was the class of 18--. Upon the roll of
its fifty-two members stood the name of Herbert Vannelle. Rich, an
orphan, inclined to thought and study beyond the limited academic range
of those days, endowed with personal fascinations of a very rare and
peculiar kind,--there seemed only one possible shadow to darken his
career. In his family there had been said to exist a tendency to
eccentric independence of action, which vulgarly, perhaps justly, passed
for insanity. His father, who died soon after Herbert entered college,
had given much uneasiness to the wealthy and respectable city-circle
with which he was socially connected. Upon the death of his wife he had
retired to the Vannelle homestead in the northwestern part of
Connecticut, and there lived in studious seclusion. There he insisted
upon bringing up his only son, deprived of such recreations and
companionships as are suitable to youth. He had, indeed, superintended
his studies with patience and thoroughness, and had not failed to
accomplish him in the grace of physical power, at that time little
recognized as a part of education.

So much was known of Vannelle when he appeared at college among the
young men of the Junior Class. And little more was known of him when he
left America on the day his class graduated. His connections with the
other students had been very slight. He had never cared to acquire that
fluency in retailing the thoughts of others upon which college-rank
depends. An access to the library was all that he seemed to value in his
connection with the institution. And here he busied himself, not with
the openings to the solid and rational