as written perhaps in too
glowing a rhetoric for the true scientific tone of mind; but there was no
doubt that his assertion met with a most startling aptness all the
difficulties which had accompanied the received theories on the phenomena
attending those changeable suns of marvellous systems so far away. It
accounted for the nebulous mist that surrounds some of them at their
weakest time; in short, took up a position of probability which has never
yet been successfully assailed.

The papers were written in triplicate, and carefully sealed up with blue
wax. One copy was directed to Greenwich, another to the Royal Society,
another to a prominent astronomer. A brief statement of the essence of
the discovery was also prepared for the leading daily paper.

He considered these documents, embodying as they did two years of his
constant thought, reading, and observation, too important to be entrusted
for posting to the hands of a messenger; too important to be sent to the
sub-post-office at hand. Though the day was wet, dripping wet, he went
on foot with them to a chief office, five miles off, and registered them.
Quite exhausted by the walk, after his long night-work, wet through, yet
sustained by the sense of a great achievement, he called at a
bookseller's for the astronomical periodicals to which he subscribed;
then, resting for a short time at an inn, he plodded his way homewards,
reading his papers as he went, and planning how to enjoy a repose on his
laurels of a week or more.

On he strolled through the rain, holding the umbrella vertically over the
exposed page to keep it dry while he read. Suddenly his eye was struck
by an article. It was the review of a pamphlet by an American
astronomer, in which the author announced a conclusive discovery with
regard to variable stars.

The discovery was precisely the discovery of Swithin St. Cleeve. Another
man had forestalled his fame by a period of about six weeks.

Then the youth found that the goddess Philosophy, to whom he had vowed to
dedicate his whole life, would not in return support him through a single
hour of despair. In truth, the impishness of circumstance was newer to
him than it would have been to a philosopher of threescore-and-ten. In a
wild wish for annihilation he flung himself down on a patch of heather
that lay a little removed from the road, and in this humid bed remained
motionless, while time passed by unheeded.

At last, from sheer misery