electable hero.
At fourteen she had fallen upon Scott and Bulwer and had devoured them
voraciously during the long vacation, in shady corners of the deserted
campus; and she was now fixing Dickens's characters ineffaceably in her
mind by Cruikshank's drawings. She was well grounded in Latin and had a
fair reading knowledge of French and German. It was true of Sylvia, then
and later, that poetry did not greatly interest her, and this had been
attributed to her undoubted genius for mathematics. She was old for her
age, people said, and the Lane wondered what her grandfather meant to
do with her.

The finding of Professor Kelton proves to be, as Sylvia had surmised, a
simple matter. He is at work in a quiet alcove of the college library, a
man just entering sixty, with white, close-trimmed hair and beard. The
eyes he raises to his granddaughter are like hers, and there is a
further resemblance in the dark skin. His face brightens and his eyes
kindle as he clasps Sylvia's slender, supple hand.

"It must be a student--are you sure he isn't a student?"

Sylvia was confident of it.

"Very likely an agent, then. They're very clever about disguising
themselves. I never see agents, you know, Sylvia."

Sylvia declared her belief that the stranger was not an agent, and the
professor glanced at his book reluctantly.

"Very well; I will see him. I wish you would run down these references
for me, Sylvia. Don't trouble about those I have checked off. It can't
be possible I am following a false clue. I'm sure I printed that article
in the 'Popular Science Monthly,' for I recall perfectly that John Fiske
wrote me a letter about it. Come home when you have finished and we'll
take our usual walk together."

Professor Kelton had relinquished his chair in the college when Sylvia
came to live with him twelve years before the beginning of this history,
and had shut himself away from the world; but no one knew why. Sylvia
was the child of his only daughter, of whom no one ever spoke, though
the older members of the faculty had known her, as they had known also
the professor's wife, now dead many years. Professor Kelton had changed
with the coming of Sylvia, so his old associates said; and their wives
wondered that he should have undertaken the bringing-up of the child
without other aid than that of the Irishwoman who had cooked his meals
and taken care of the house ever since Mrs. Kelton's death. He was still
a special lecturer at Madis