The difference of opinion touching the lights at the railway station on the night of the fatal accident, continued to create no small sensation. The jury turned nearly rampant; vowing they\'d not attend the everlastingly adjourned inquest, and wanting every time to return no verdict at all, say they could not, and have done with it. The coroner told them that was impossible; though he avowed that he did not see his way clearly out of it. But for being the responsible party, he would have willingly pitched the whole affair into the sea.

Over and over again did the public recount the circumstances one with another. When anybody could get hold of a stranger, hitherto in happy ignorance, he thought himself in luck, and went gushingly into all the details. It was a stock-in-trade for the local newspapers; and two of them entered on a sharp weekly controversy in regard to it. In truth, the matter, that is the conflict in the evidence, was most remarkable. That one party should stand to it the lights were red, and that the other should maintain they were green, was astonishing from the simple fact that both sides were worthy of credit. In the earlier stage of the enquiry the coroner had significantly remarked upon the "hard swearing somewhere:" it seemed more of a mystery than ever on which side that reproach could attach to. The jury could arrive at no decision, and thus the inquest had been adjourned time after time, and now the county was getting tired of it. Cooper, meanwhile suspended from employment, stood a chance of being reduced to straits if it lasted much longer. The colonel and Oliver Jupp, who had become intimate, made rather merry over it when they met, each accusing the other of having "seen double;" but neither would give way an inch. The lawyers were confounded, and knew not which side to believe; neither of the two gentlemen had the slightest personal interest in the matter; they spoke to further the ends of justice alone, and the one and the other were alike worthy of credit.

Affairs were in this unsatisfactory state, when a gentleman arrived in the neighbourhood on a short sojourn, a Dr. Macpherson, LL.D., F.R.S., and so on; about seventeen letters in all he could put after his name if he chose to do it. He was a man great in science, had devoted the most part of his life to it, no branch came amiss to him; he had travelled much and was renowned in the world. Amidst other acquirements he had phrenology at his fingers\' ends, being as much at home in it as we poor unlearned mortals are in reading a newspaper; or as Mr. Lake was in making himself agreeable to a pretty woman.

They were staying at the "Rose Inn," at Guild, this learned gentleman and his wife. Professor Macpherson (as he was frequently called) had come down on some mission connected with geology. He was a very wire of a man, tall and thin as a lamp-post, exceedingly near-sighted, even in his silver-rimmed spectacles that he constantly wore; a meek, gentle, simple-minded man, whose coats and hats were threadbare, a very child in the ways of the world; as these excessively abstruse spirits are apt to be.

Mrs. Macpherson was in all respects his opposite: stout in figure, fine in dress, loud in speech; and keen in the affairs of common life. Good-hearted enough at the main, but sadly wanting in refinement, Mrs. Macpherson rarely pleased at first; in short, not to mince the matter, she was undeniably vulgar. Mrs. Macpherson\'s education had not been equal to her merits; her early associations were not of the silver-fork school. She was a very pretty girl when Caleb Macpherson (not the great man he was now) married her; habit reconciles us to most things, and he had discovered no fault in her yet. That she made him a good wife was certain, and a very capable one.

This was the second visit Professor Macpherson had made to Guild. The first took place about half a dozen years ago, when he had come on a question of "pneumatics." He had then become acquainted with the Reverend Mr. Chester, not himself unlearned in science, and had spent several hours of three separate days at the rectory. James Chester had gone now where science probably avails not; Mrs. Chester had quitted the rectory; and it might have chanced that the acquaintanceship would never have been renewed but for an accidental meeting.

Mrs. Chester was walking quickly into Guild on an errand when she met him. He would have passed her; her style of dress was altered--and for the matter of that he always went (as his wife put it) mooning on, his head in the skies and looking at nobody. But Mrs. Chester stopped him. Except that he looked taller and thinner, and his coat a little more threadbare than of old, and his spectacles staring out straighter up at the clouds or at the far-off horizon, he was not altered.

"Have you forgotten me, Dr. Macpherson?"

It took the doctor some few minutes to bring himself and his thoughts down to the level of passing life. Mrs. Chester had to tell him who she was, and that she was now alone in the world. He took both her hands in his then, and spoke a few words of genuine sympathy, with the sorrowful look in his kind eyes, and the tone of true pity coming from his ever-open heart.

"You will come and call on me, will you not?" she asked, after telling him where she lived.

"I\'ll come this evening," he said, "and bring my wife. She\'s with me this time."

So Mrs. Chester went home and told Lady Ellis of the promised visit. That lady, who had been fit to die of weariness since the departure of Mr. Lake, welcomed it eagerly; on the principle that even an old professor with seventeen letters beyond his name was of the man species, and consequently better than nobody.

"I don\'t know his wife," spoke Mrs. Chester. "She is rather exclusive, most likely. The wife of a man who has made so much noise in the world may look down upon us."

Lady Ellis raised her black eyebrows and had a great mind to tell Mrs. Chester to speak for herself; she was not accustomed to be looked down upon.

"Does the wife wear a threadbare gown?" she asked, having heard the description of the professor\'s coats.

"Very likely," said Mrs. Chester. "She need not, you know; they are rich."

"Rich, are they?"

"Very rich--now. In early life they had to pinch and screw, and live without a servant. Dr. Macpherson told us about it."

"He is not above confessing it, then?"

"He!" Mrs. Chester laughed. The simple professor, being "above" confessing anything of that sort, was a ludicrous idea. She attempted to describe him as he was.

"My dear Lady Ellis, you can have no notion of his simplicity--his utter unworldliness. In all that relates to learning and that sort of thing he is of the very keenest intellect; sharp; but in social life he is just a child. He would respect a woman who has to wash up her dishes herself just as much as he would if she kept ten servants to do it for her. I don\'t believe he can distinguish any difference."

"Oh!" concluded Lady Ellis, casting a gesture of contempt on the absent and unconscious professor.

Dr. Macpherson meanwhile, immediately after parting with Mrs. Chester, put his hand in his pocket for his case of gradients--or whatever the name might be--and found he had not got it. To go geologizing or botanizing without it would have been so much waste of time, and he turned back to the "Rose." It was well for the evening visit that he did so; but for telling his wife at once while it was fresh in his head, they had never paid it; for the professor would have forgotten all about it in half an hour.

Mrs. Macpherson sat fanning herself at the window. She was a stout woman, comely, red-faced, and jolly; and the fire was large, throwing out a great heat. Her face and that of her pale thin husband\'s presented a very contrast. She wore a bright green silk gown, garnished with scarlet, and scarlet bows in her rich lace cap.

"I forgot my case, Betsy," said he, on entering.

"\'Twouldn\'t be you, prefessor, if you didn\'t forget some\'at," returned she, equably. "For a man who has had his head filled with learning, you be the greatest oaf I know."

Accustomed to these compliments from his wife--meekly receiving them as his due--Dr. Macpherson took up his case, a thick pocket-book apparently, the size of a small milestone. He then mentioned his meeting with Mrs. Chester, and the promised evening visit, which was received favourably.

"It\'ll be a godsend," said Mrs. Macpherson. "With you over them writings of yours, and me a-nodding asleep, the evenings here is fearful dull. Is the invite for tea and supper?"

Rather a puzzling question. Tea and supper were so little thought of by the professor, that but for his wife he might never have partaken of either; and he had to consider for some moments before he could hit upon any answer.

"I don\'t think it is, Betsy; I only said I\'d call."

"Oh!" returned Mrs. Macpherson, ungraciously, for she liked good cheer,--"It\'ll hardly be worth going for. It\'s not a party, then?"

The professor supposed not. On these matters of social intercourse his ideas were always misty. He remembered that Mrs. Chester said she had a Lady Ellis visiting her, and mentioned the fact.

Mrs. Macpherson brightened up. "A Lady Ellis! Are you sure?"

"Yes; I think I\'m sure."

"Well now, Caleb, you look here. We must go properly," said Mrs. Macpherson. "I never was brought into contract with a real live lady in my life; I haven\'t never had the chance of saying \'your ladyship,\' except in sport. We\'ll have out a chaise and pair, and, drive up in it."

Had she proposed to drive up in a chaise and eight, it would have been all one to the professor. Conscious of his own deficiency on the score of sociality (not sociability) and fashion, he had been content this many a year to leave these things to her.

They arrived at Mrs. Chester\'s about seven. The chaise and pair rattled up to the gate; but as it was dark night, the pomp of the arrival could not be seen from within, and the gilt was taken off the gingerbread. It happened that Mr. Lake had come over that afternoon--a rather frequent occurrence--and Mrs. Chester had asked him to stay and see the strangers. He and Lady Ellis were at their usual game, chess, and Mrs. Chester was at work close by, when the visitors were announced by Nanny, the names having been given her by the lady--

"Professor and Mrs. Macpherson."

He came in first--the long, thin, absorbed, self-denying man, in his threadbare frock-coat. Mrs. Macpherson had left off fighting against these coats long ago. She ordered him in new ones in vain. As soon as one came home, he would put it on unconsciously, utterly unable to distinguish between that and his old one, and go to his work in it: "his chemical tests, and his proofs, and all that rubbish," as she was in the habit of saying. Somehow he had a knack of wearing his coats out incredibly quick, or else the poisons and the fires did it for him. In a week the new one would be as bad as the rest--shabby and threadbare. Mrs. Macpherson grew tired at last. "After all, it don\'t much matter," was her final conclusion, in pardonable pride. "Good coat or bad coat, he\'s Prefessor Macpherson." His scanty dark hair was brushed smoothly across his head, his brown eyes, shining through his spectacles, went kindly out in search of Mrs. Chester, who advanced to receive him.

"My wife, ma\'am; Mrs. Macpherson."

Mrs. Macpherson came in--a ship in full sail. She had dressed herself to go into the presence of a real live lady. She did not travel without her attire, if he did. The forgetful man was apt to start on a journey with nothing but what he stood up in; she took travelling trunks.

An amber satin gown with white brocade flowers on it, white lace shawl, and small bonnet with nodding bird-of-paradise feather, white gloves, flaxen hair. Lady Ellis simply stared while the introductions were gone through and seats were taken. Mrs. Macpherson was free and unreserved in her conversation with strangers, concealing nothing.

"I was as glad as anything when the prefessor said we were coming here for a call this evening," she remarked to Mrs. Chester. "Not knowing a soul in the place, it\'s naturally dull for me; and we shall have to stop a week at it, I b\'lieve."

"You were not with Dr. Macpherson last time, when I and my late husband had the pleasure of making his acquaintance," observed Mrs. Chester, surreptitiously regarding the bird-of-paradise.

"Not I," answered Mrs. Macpherson. "If I went about always with him, I should have a life of it. What with his geographies, and his botanies, and his astronomies, and his chemistries, and his social sciences, and the meetings he has to attend in all parts of the globe, and the country excursions the societies make in a body, he is not much at home."

"This is only the second visit he has paid to Guild, I think?"

"That\'s all. It\'s geology this time; last time it was--Prefessor, what\'s the name of the thing you were down here for last?" broke off Mrs. Macpherson.

"Pneumatics," he answered, looking lovingly at the child, Fanny Chester, and a bit of heath she was showing him.

"Eumatics," repeated Mrs. Macpherson. "Not that I can ever understand what it means. The name\'s hard enough, let alone the thing itself."

Perhaps the other ladies were in the same blissful ignorance. Mr. Lake checkmated his adversary, left her to put up the men, and went over to the professor.

Before tea came in they were out in the garden peering about by starlight, the remains of an old Roman wall there, that Mr. Lake happened to mention, keenly exciting the interest of the professor. Mrs. Macpherson was invited to take off her things, and she threw the handsome white shawl aside; but having brought no cap, the bird-of-paradise retained its place. This much might be said for her, that though addicted to very gay clothes, they were always rich and good. Mrs. Macpherson would have worn nothing poor or tawdry.

"How fond they are of these miserable bits of things--pieces of an old wall, strata of earth, wild plants, and such rubbish!" exclaimed Lady Ellis, with acrimony, inwardly vexed that Mr. Lake should have gone out a-roving.

"Rubbish it is--your ladyship\'s right," spoke Mrs. Macpherson. "Leastways, so it seems to us: but when folks have gifted minds, as the prefessor has, why perhaps they can see beauties in \'em that\'s hid to us others."

Not very complimentary on the whole; but Lady Ellis did not choose to see it.

"Of course," she said, "your husband is wonderfully clever; he has a world-wide fame. I heard of him in India."

"Clever on one side, a gander on t\'other," said Mrs. Macpherson.

"A gander?"

"Well, you\'d not say a goose, I suppose. In his sciences and his ologies, and his chemicals and his other learnings, why he\'s uncommon; there\'s hardly his equal, the public says. But take him in the useful things of life, your ladyship, and see what he\'s good for. Law bless me!"

"Not for much, I suppose," laughed Mrs. Chester.

"I\'d be bound that any child of seven would have more sense. But for me helping him to it, he\'d never have a meal; no, I don\'t believe, as I\'m an honest woman, that he\'d recollect to sit down to one. When he\'s away from me, he, as I tell him, goes in for trying to live upon air."

"Do you mean that he really tries to see if he can live upon it?"

"Bless you, no. He must know he couldn\'t. What I mean is, that he neglects his food--either forgets it out and out, or does not find time to sit down to it. And then his clothes! Look at the coat he has got on now."

Neither of the two ladies having particularly noticed the coat, they could not make much answering comment. Mrs. Macpherson, fond of talking, did not wait for any.

"I wonder sometimes what would become of him, and how long he would wear a coat, but for being looked after. Why, till it dropped off his back. I have to put every earthly thing ready for him--even to a pocket-handkercher--and then he can\'t see them. I used to let him have a chest of drawers to himself, handkerchers in one, gloves and collars in another, shirts in a third, and so on. He\'d want, let\'s say, a necktie. Every individual thing would be taken out of every drawer, nicked over, thrown on the floor, and he in quite a state of agitation. Up I\'d go, and show it to him. There it would be, staring him in the face, right under his very eyes."

"And he not seeing it?"

"Never. I soon left off letting him have the control of his own drawers. I give him one now, and lock up the rest, so that he has to call me when he wants things. He\'ll have his spectacles on his nose and be looking after them; his hand might be touching the ink, and he\'d not see it. Ah! One might wonder why such useless mortals were born."

"But the professor is so kind and good," observed Mrs. Chester.

"I didn\'t say he wasn\'t; I\'m not complaining of him," returned the professor\'s lady, giving a nod to the bird-of-paradise. "One tells these things as one would tell stories of a child that\'s not ............