ng his own will upon others,--"meanwhile must I
send away the tailor?" I need not repeat Lionel's answer.

CHAPTER IX.

DARRELL--mystery in his past life--What has he done with it?

Some days passed, each day varying little from the other. It was the
habit of Darrell if he went late to rest to rise early. He never allowed
himself more than five hours sleep. A man greater than Guy Darrell--Sir
Walter Raleigh--carved from the solid day no larger a slice for
Morpheus. And it was this habit perhaps, yet more than temperance in
diet, which preserved to Darrell his remarkable youthfulness of aspect
and frame, so that at fifty-two he looked, and really was, younger than
many a strong man of thirty-five. For, certain it is, that on entering
middle life, he who would keep his brain clear, his step elastic, his
muscles from fleshiness, his nerves from tremor,--in a word, retain his
youth in spite of the register,--should beware of long slumbers. Nothing
ages like laziness. The hours before breakfast Darrell devoted first to
exercise, whatever the weather; next to his calm scientific pursuits. At
ten o'clock punctually he rode out alone and seldom returned till late
in the afternoon. Then he would stroll forth with Lionel into devious
woodlands, or lounge with him along the margin of the lake, or lie down
on the tedded grass, call the boy's attention to the insect populace
which sports out its happy life in the summer months, and treat of the
ways and habits of each varying species, with a quaint learning, half
humorous, half grave. He was a minute observer and an accomplished
naturalist. His range of knowledge was, indeed, amazingly large for a
man who has had to pass his best years in a dry and absorbing study:
necessarily not so profound in each section as that of a special
professor; but if the science was often on the surface, the thoughts he
deduced from what he knew were as often original and deep. A maxim of
his, which he dropped out one day to Lionel in his careless manner, but
pointed diction, may perhaps illustrate his own practice and its results
"Never think it enough to have solved the problem started by another
mind till you have deduced from it a corollary of your own."

After dinner, which was not over till past eight o'clock, they always
adjourned to the library, Fairthorn vanishing into a recess, Darrell and
Lionel each with his several book, then an air on the flute, and each
to his own room before