Rushing through the streets of London, as if he were rushing for his life, went a gentleman in deep mourning. It was Robert Hunter. Very soon after we last saw her, he had followed the hearse that conveyed his wife to her long home in Katterley churchyard.

Putting aside his grief, his regret, his bitter repentance, her death made every difference to him. Had there been a child, the house and income would have remained his; being none, it all went from him. Of his own money but little remained: he had been extravagant during the brief period when he was Lieutenant Hunter, had spent right and left. One does not do these things without having to pay for it. Mrs. Chester, going over to offer a condoling visit, heard this, and spoke out her opinion with her usual want of reserve. She looked upon him as a man lost. "No," said he, "I am saved! I shall go to work now." "Hoping to redeem fortune?" she rejoined. "Yes," he said, "and something else besides."

Heavily lay the shadow of the past upon Robert Hunter. The drooping form of his loving and neglected wife, bright with hope once, mouldering in her grave now, was in his mind always; the years that he had wasted in frivolity, the money he had recklessly spent. Oh, the simpleton he was--as he thought now, looking back in his repentance. When he had become master of a good profession, why did he abandon it because a little money was left him? To become a gentleman amongst gentlemen, forsooth; to put away the soiling of his hands; to live a life of vanity and indolence. Heaven had recompensed him in its own just way: whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he reap. His soldiership was gone; his wife was gone; money, the greater portion of it, was gone. Nothing left to him but remembrance, and the ever-present, bitter sense of his folly. He was beginning life anew: he must go back to the bottom of the tree of his engineering profession, lower than where he had left off: he would so begin it and take up his work daily, and untiringly persevere in it, so as--Heaven helping him--to atone for the past. Not all the past. The wasted years were gone for ever; the gentle wife, whom he had surely helped to send to the grave, could not be recalled to earth. Not so much on his wife were his musings bent as on the career of work lying before him. He had so grieved for her in the days before and immediately after her death, that it seemed as though the sorrow had, in a degree, spent itself, and reaction set in. If his handicraft\'s best skill, indifference to privation, unflagging industry, could redeem the past idleness, he would surely redeem that. Not in a pecuniary point of view, it was not of that he thought, but in the far graver one of wasted life. His eyes were opening a little; he saw how offensive on High must be a life of mere idle indulgence; a waste of that precious time, short at the best, bestowed upon him to use. This, this was what he had resolved to atone for: Heaven helping him, he once more aspirated in the sad but resolute earnestness of his heart.

Making an end of his affairs at Katterley, he came to London, presented himself at the office of the firm where he was formerly employed, and said he had come to ask for work. They remembered the clever, active, industrious young man, and were glad to have him again. And Robert Hunter--dropping his easy life, just as he dropped the name he had borne in it--entered on his career of toil and usefulness.

The spring was growing late when his employers intimated to him that he was going to be sent to Spain, to superintend some work there. Anywhere, he answered; he was quite ready, let them send him where they would.

On this morning that we see him splashing through the mud of London improvised by the water carts, he was busy making his preparations for departure, and was on his way to call on Professor Macpherson. He wanted some information in regard to the locality for which he was bound, and thought the professor could supply it. The previous night, sitting alone in his lodgings, he had been surprised, and rather annoyed, by the appearance of Mrs. Chester. That lady was in town on her own business, and found him out. Incautiously he let slip that he was going on the morrow to Dr. Macpherson\'s. She seized upon the occasion to make a visit also.

At this very moment Mrs. Chester was en route also. Pushing her way along, inquiring her road perpetually, getting into all sorts of odd nooks and turnings, she at length emerged on the more open squares of Bloomsbury, and there she saw her brother, who had been calling at places on his way, in front of her.

"You might have waited for me, Robert, I think."

"I did wait twenty minutes. I came on then. My time is not my own, you know, Penelope."

"Have you seen anything of Lady Ellis since you came to London?" inquired Mrs. Chester, as they walked on together.

"No, I should not be likely to see her."

"She is staying in London; she came to it direct when she left me. At least, she was staying here, but in a letter I had from her she said she thought of going on a visit to Coastdown. Her plans----"

"Excuse me, Penelope, I don\'t care to hear of Lady Ellis\'s plans."

"You have grown quite a bear, Robert! That\'s what work\'s doing for you."

He laughed pleasantly. "I think it is hurry that is doing it for me this morning, I feel as if I had no time for anything. Number fifteen. Here we are!"

It was a commodious house, this one in Bloomsbury, steps leading up to the entrance. He sent in his card, "Mr. Robert Hunter," and they were admitted.

"Lawk a\' mercy! Is it you?" exclaimed Mrs. Macpherson, looking first at the card and then at its owner, as they were shown into a handsome room, and the professor\'s lady, in sky-blue silk, and a scarlet Garibaldi body elaborately braided with black, advanced to receive them. She did not wear the bird-of-paradise feather, but she wore something equivalent to it: some people might call it a cap and some a turban, the front ornament of which, perching on the forehead, was an artificial bird, with shining wings of green and gold.

Mrs. Macpherson took a hand of each, shaking them heartily. "And so you have put away your name?" she said.

"Strictly speaking, it never was my name," he answered. "It was my wife\'s. I had to assume it with her property, but when the property left me again, I thought it time to drop the name."

The professor came forward in his threadbare coat, with (it must be owned) a great stream of some sticky red liquid down the front of it, for they had fetched him from his experimenting laboratory. But his smile was bright, his welcome genial. Mrs. Macpherson, whose first thoughts were always of hospitality, ordered luncheon to be got ready. Robert Hunter, sitting down between them, quietly told them he had become a working man again, and where he was going, and what to do. Mrs. Macpherson heard him with a world of sympathy.

"It\'s just one o\' them crosses in life that come to a many of us," remarked she. "Play first and work afterwards! it\'s out o\' the order of things. But take heart. You\'ve got your youth yet, and you\'ll grow reconciled."

"If you only knew how glad I am to be at work again!" he said, a faint light of earnestness crossing his face. "My years of idleness follow me as a reproach--as a waste of life."

"But for steady attention to my work and studies, I should never have been able to contribute my poor mite to further the cause of science," said the professor, meekly, speaking it as an encouragement to Robert Hunter.

"If he hadn\'t stuck at it late and early--burning the candle at both ends, as \'twere--he\'d not have had his ologies at his fingers\' tips," pursued Mrs. Macpherson, who often deemed it necessary to explain more lucidly her husband\'s meaning.

"And so you are about to migrate to Spain?" said the professor. "You----"

"He says he\'s going off to it by rail," interposed Mrs. Macpherson. "What are the people there? Blacks?"

"No, no, Betsy; they are white, as we are."

"I knew a Spanish man once, professor, and he was olive brown."

"They are dark from the effects of the sun. I thought you alluded to the race. The radiation of heat there is excessive; and----"

"That is, it\'s burning hot in the place," corrected Mrs. Macpherson. "I wish you joy of it, Mr. Hunter. You\'ll catch it full, a-laying down of your lines of rail."

"I think you have been in Spain?" observed Mr. Hunter to the doctor.

"I once stayed some months there. What do you say?--that you want some information that you think I can supply? I hope I can. What is it? Please to step into my room."

The professor passed out of the door by which he entered, Mr. Hunter following him. A short passage, and then they were in the square back room consecrated to the professor and his pursuits. It was not a museum, it was not a laboratory, it was not a library, or an aviary of stuffed birds, or an astronomical observatory; but it was something of all. Specimens of earth, of rock, of flowers, of plants, of weeds, of antiquarian walls; of animals, birds, fish, insects; books in cases, owls in cages; and a vast many more odd things too numerous to mention. Mrs. Macpherson thought it well to follow them.

"Law!" said she to Mrs. Chester, "did living mortal ever see the like o\' the place?"

"What a confused mass of things it is!" was the answer, as Mrs. Chester\'s eyes went roving around in curiosity.

"He says it isn\'t. He has the face to tell me everything is in its place, and he could find it in the dark. The great beast there with its round eyes, is a owl that some of \'em caught and killed when they went out moralizing into Herefordshire."

"Not moralizing, Betsy. One of the excursions of the Geological Society----"

"It\'s all the same," interrupted Mrs. Macpherson; and the professor meekly turned to Mr. Hunter and continued an explanation he was giving him, a sort of earthenware pipe in his hand. The ladies drew near.

"You perceive, Mr. Hunter, there is a small aperture for the passing in of the atmospheric air?"

"That is, there\'s a hole where the wind goes out," explained the professor\'s wife.

"By these means, taking the precautions I have previously shown you, the pressure on the valve may be increased to almost any given extent! As a natural consequence----"

"Oh, bother consequences!" cried Mrs. Macpherson; "I\'m sure young Robert Hunter don\'t care to waste his time with that rubbish, when there\'s cold beef and pickled salmon waiting."

"Just two minutes, Betsy, and Mr. Hunter shall be with you. Perhaps you and Mrs. Chester will oblige us by going on."

"Not if I know it," said the lady, resolutely. "I\'ve had experience of your \'two minutes\' before today, prefessor, and seen \'em swell into two mortal hours. Come! finish what you\'ve got to say to him, and we\'ll all go together."

Dr. Macpherson continued his explanations in a low voice, possibly to avoid more interruptions. Five minutes or so, and they moved from the table, the doctor still talking in answer to a question.

"Not yet. I grieve to say we have not any certain clue to it, and opinions are much divided among us. It needs these checks to remind us of our finite nature, Mr. Hunter. So far shalt thou go, but no farther. That is a law of the Divine Creator, and we cannot break it."

Robert Hunter smiled. "The strangest thing of all is to hear one of you learned men acknowledge as much. The philosopher\'s stone; perpetual motion; the advancing and receding tides--do you not live in expectation of making the secret of these marvels yours?"

Professor Macpherson shook his head. "If we were permitted: but we never shall be. If. That word has been the arresting point of man in the past ages, as it will be in the future. Archimedes said he could move the world, you know, if he had but an outward spot to rest the fulcrum of his lever on."

"It\'s a lucky thing for us that Archimy didn\'t," was the comment of Mrs. Macpherson. "It wouldn\'t be pleasant to be swayed about promiscous, the earth tossing like a ship at sea."

Robert Hunter declined the luncheon; he had many things to do still, and his time in England was growing very short; so he said adieu to them both then, and to his sister.

"Now remember, Robert Hunter," said Mrs. Macpherson, taking both his hands, "when you visit England temporay, and want a friendly bed to put yourself into, come to us. Me and the prefessor took to you when we first saw you at Guild. You remember that night," she added, turning to Mrs. Chester: "we come up in a carriage and pair; I wore my orange brocade and my bird-o\'-paradise; and there was a Lady Somebody there, one o\' those folks that put on airs and graces; which isn\'t pretty in a my lady, any more than it is in a missis. You took our fancies, Mr. Hunter--though it does seem odd to be calling you that, and not Lake--and we\'ll look upon it as a favour if you\'ll come to us sometimes. The prefessor knows we shall, but he\'s never cute at compliments. He was born without gumption."

The professor\'s lingering shake of the hand, the welcoming look in his kindly eyes, said at least as much as his wife\'s words; and Robert Hunter went forth, knowing that they wished to be his friends.

So they sat down to their luncheon and he departed; and the same night went forth on his travels.

Coastdown lay low in the light of the morning sun. The skies were clear, the rippling sea was gay with its fishing boats. Spring had been very late that year, but this was a day warm and bright. The birds were singing, the lambs were sporting in the fields, the hedges were bursting into buds of green.

Swinging through the gate of the Red Court Farm, having been making a call there to fetch a newspaper, came Captain Copp: a sailor with a wooden leg, a pea jacket, and a black glazed hat. Captain Copp had been a merchant captain of the better class, as his father was before him. After his misfortune--the loss of his leg in an encounter with pirates--he gave up the sea, and settled at Coastdown on his small but sufficient income.

The captain\'s womenkind--as he was in the habit of calling the inmates of his house--consisted of his wife and a maid servant. The former was meek, yielding, gentle as those gentle lambs in the field; the latter, Sarah Ford, worth her weight in gold for honest capability, liked to manage the captain and the world on occasions. There were encounters between them. He was apt to call her a she-pirate and other affectionate names. She openly avowed her disbelief in his marvellous reminiscences, especially one that was a standing story with him concerning a sea-serpent that he saw with his own eyes in the Pacific Ocean. He had also seen a mermaid. Like many another sailor, the captain was a simple-minded man in land affairs, only great at sea and its surroundings; with implicit faith in all its marvels.

On occasions the captain\'s mother honoured him with a visit; a resolute, well-to-do lady, who used to voyage with her husband, and had now settled in Liverpool. When she came she ruled the house and the captain, for she thought him (forty, now) and his wife little better than children yet. In solid sense, if you believed herself, nobody could approach her.

Captain Copp came forth from his call at the Red Court Farm, letting the gate swing behind him, and stumped along quickly, his stout stick and his wooden leg keeping time on the ground. The captain\'s face was beaming with satisfaction, for he had contrived to lay hold of young Cyril Thornycroft, and recount to him (for the fiftieth time) the whole story of the sea-serpent from beginning to end. He was a short, wiry man, with the broad round shoulders of a sailor. The road branched off before him two ways, like an old-fashioned fork; the way on the right led direct to the village and the common beach; the way on the left to his home.

The captain halted. Sociably inclined, he was rather fond of taking himself to the Mermaid; that noted-public house where the sailors and the coastguard men congregated to watch the omnibus come in from Jutpoint. It must be getting near to the time of its arrival, half-past eleven, and the captain\'s leg moved a step forward in the direction; on the other hand, he wanted to say a word to that she-serpent Sarah (with whom he had enjoyed an encounter before coming out) about the dinner. The striking of the clock decided him, and he bore on for home, past the churchyard. C............