In company with a seeing confederate, he would have made a good scout. His knowledge of the country, of the mysteries of the woods and fields, intensified as he grew older. In the Wilderness, many an Indian path-finder would have lost the crackling of the branches under the swift hoof of a distant hurrying deer, or the soft call of the partridge to her young which Fawcett always heard. The distinctive smells and sounds of the seasons were clearly marked for him. The swish of the rollicking crisp leaves dancing before the wind along the roadways, and the thud of the falling apples on the hard ground in the orchard, made him laugh as it brought autumn to his senses. Winter, with its clear-cut noises, cracklings of ice and snow under foot, lost none of its sternness because he could not see its long white robes. He loved the smells of spring, and seemed to feel the pushing and striving in the dank earth and to divine the fragrance soon to burst forth. Like a giant lizard he revelled and basked in the heat of the summer sun, and rejoiced in the contrast of the cool shadow beneath the heavy-laden trees, the smell of the hot grass and of fully opened fragrant flowers, and the sedate ‘brum’ of the bourgeois bumble-bee. [Sidenote: Increasing Interests.] Though by his professorship attached for life to Cambridge, Fawcett’s interests were deep in the world of politics, in which he had already made his début as the member of Parliament for Brighton. To simplify our story we will take up the history of his early political efforts in a new chapter. The new M.P. was extremely popular; his friends were among the greatest men of the day—three of them at least, Darwin, Mill, Thackeray, gave new life to widely different callings. CHAPTER XIII THE NEW M.P. AND THE CLUB Thackeray and the Reform Club—The popular M.P.—The Assassination of Lincoln—Marriage. [Sidenote: Thackeray as Champion.]