on. 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, stopping at night at the farm-houses,
or often sleeping out under