heap of brass
filings; the other, for two-thirds of its length, was a litter of
books and papers. But the end nearest to the working-bench had been
cleared, and here stood a mighty curious intricate mechanism of
wheels and brass wire and little brass balls, with fine brass chains
depending through holes in the board. My host flung a tender look at
it across his shoulder as he stepped to the press to fetch basin and
towel.

'The oaf has dislocated the pin of the fly-wheel,' he grunted.
'Praise Heaven, he never guessed that it worked on a diamond, or
slight chance had my poor toy with his loutish fingers stuck in it!'

He filled the basin with water from a copper ewer that rested close
to the brazier on a file of folios, and set it to heat. 'I doubt I
must give up the meteors to-night,' he continued, and went back to
his machine, with which, I could see, his fingers were itching to be
busy.

I asked, 'Is that, sir, an invention of yours?'

'Ay, soldier,' he answered; 'mine solely; the child of my brain's
begetting.' His hands hovered over the delicate points and wires.
'And to be murdered thus by a great thumb-fingered dragoneer!'
With a lens and a delicate needle, he began to peer and prise in it;
and anon, fixing the lens in his eye, reached out for his hand-lamp.

'To what use have you designed it, sir?' I asked, after a while spent
in watching him.

'To no use at all, soldier,' he answered, more tartly. 'The water is
warm, and you can bathe your hurt and afterwards I will plaster it.'
While I laved my temple with the edge of the towel, between the dip
of the water I heard his voice in broken sentences: 'To no use at
all. . . . Would a man ask the sun to what use it danced? . . .
or the moon and planets? . . .'

I looked up, dabbing my wound gently. His voice had risen and
stretched itself on a high, monotonous pitch. He was declaiming
verse.

'Who doth not see the measures of the Moon?
Which thirteen times she dances every year,
And ends her Pavane thirteen times as soon
As doth--

Hey? Do you know the lines, soldier?' He stepped forward and peered
close at my head while I shook it. 'Tush! a cut, a trifle! Go on
bathing. . . . The lines, sir, were writ by Sir John Davies, the
first of English poets.'

'Indeed, sir,' said I. 'Now at the Inner Temple, before mixing
myself in these troubles, I used to read much poetry and dispute on
it with other young men. We had our s