nce toward conclusive experiments. For example, I know
that the heat of the sun during the day rarefies the air over the land,
and so causes the wind. You challenge me to prove it. I escort you down
the kitchen stairs (with your kind permission); take my largest pie-dish
out of the cook's hands; I fill it with cold water. Good! that dish of
cold water represents the ocean. I next provide myself with one of our
most precious domestic conveniences, a hot-water plate; I fill it with
hot water and I put it in the middle of the pie-dish. Good again! the
hot-water plate represents the land rarefying the air over it. Bear that
in mind, and give me a lighted candle. I hold my lighted candle over the
cold water, and blow it out. The smoke immediately moves from the dish
to the plate. Before you have time to express your satisfaction, I
light the candle once more, and reverse the whole proceeding. I fill the
pie-dish with hot-water, and the plate with cold; I blow the candle out
again, and the smoke moves this time from the plate to the dish. The
smell is disagreeable--but the experiment is conclusive."

He shifted the camp-stool back again, and looked at Mrs. Lecount with
his ingratiating smile. "You don't find me long-winded, ma'am--do
you?" he said, in his easy, cheerful way, just as the housekeeper was
privately opening her e ars once more to the conversation on the other
side of her.

"I am amazed, sir, by the range of y our information," replied Mrs.
Lecount, observing the captain with some perplexity--but thus far with
no distrust. She thought him eccentric, even for an Englishman, and
possibly a little vain of his knowledge. But he had at least paid her
the implied compliment of addressing that knowledge to herself; and she
felt it the more sensibly, from having hitherto found her scientific
sympathies with her deceased husband treated with no great respect
by the people with whom she came in contact. "Have you extended your
inquiries, sir," she proceeded, after a momentary hesitation, "to my
late husband's branch of science? I merely ask, Mr. Bygrave, because
(though I am only a woman) I think I might exchange ideas with you on
the subject of the reptile creation."

Captain Wragge was far too sharp to risk his ready-made science on the
enemy's ground. The old militia-man shook his wary head.

"Too vast a subject, ma'am," he said, "for a smatterer like me. The life
and labors of such a philosopher as your husband, Mrs.