rt, he was utterly indifferent to
the figure he cut beside his Amazon. His gentleness of disposition, his
brilliant conversations with those whom, like her father, he knew and
trusted, captivated Augusta. At this period of her life she was awakening
to the glories of literature and taking a special course in that branch.
He talked to her of Gogol, Turgenief, and Dostoievsky, and seated on the
log piazza read in excellent French "Dead Souls," "Peres et Enfants," and
"The Brothers Karamazoff." At the end of August he went homeward almost
gaily, quite ignorant of the arrow in his heart, until he began to miss
Augusta Wishart's ministrations--and Augusta Wishart herself.... Then had
followed that too brief period of intensive happiness....

The idea of remarriage had never occurred to her. At eight and thirty,
though tragedy had left its mark, it had been powerless to destroy the
sweetness of a nature of such vitality as hers. The innate necessity of
loving remained, and as time went on had grown more wistful and
insistent. Insall and her Silliston neighbours were wont, indeed, gently
to rally her on her enthusiasms, while understanding and sympathizing with
this need in her. A creature of intuition, Janet had appealed to her from
the beginning, arousing first her curiosity, and then the maternal
instinct that craved a mind to mould, a soul to respond to her touch....

Mrs. Maturin often talked to Janet of Insall, who had, in a way, long
been connected with Silliston. In his early wandering days, when tramping
over New England, he used unexpectedly to turn up at Dr. Ledyard's, the
principal's, remain for several weeks and disappear again. Even then he,
had been a sort of institution, a professor emeritus in botany, bird
lore, and woodcraft, taking the boys on long walks through the
neighbouring hills; and suddenly he had surprised everybody by fancying
the tumble-down farmhouse in Judith's Lane, which he had restored with
his own hands into the quaintest of old world dwellings. Behind it he had
made a dam in the brook, and put in a water wheel that ran his workshop.
In play hours the place was usually overrun by boys.... But sometimes the
old craving for tramping would overtake him, one day his friends would
find the house shut up, and he would be absent for a fortnight, perhaps
for a month--one never knew when he was going, or when he would return.
He went, like his hero, Silas Simpkins, through the byways of New
England,