“In your article on the possibility of the permanence of reflection—to which I referred in my letter, I think?” “Yes, my lord, you did.” “You have restated a fact which I maintained for the first time more than thirty years ago! In my paper on colours, read before the Royal Society in—I think it was ’96.” Vaughan stared. His colour rose slowly. “Indeed?” he said, in a tone from which he vainly strove to banish incredulity. “You have perhaps read the paper?” “Yes, I have.” The Chancellor chuckled. “And found nothing of the kind in it?” he said. Vaughan coloured still more deeply. He felt that the position was unpleasant. “Frankly, my lord, if you ask me, no.” “And you think yourself,” with a grin, “the first discoverer?” “I did.” Brougham sprang like a boy to his feet, and whisked his long, lank body to a distant bookshelf. Thence he took down a much-rubbed manuscript book. As he returned he opened this at a place already marked, and, laying it on the table, beckoned to the young man to approach. “Read that,” he said waggishly, “and confess, young sir, that there were chiefs before Agamemnon.” Vaughan stooped over the book, and having read looked up in perplexity. “But this passage,” he said, “was not in the paper read before the Royal Society in ’96?” “In the paper read? No. Nor yet in the paper printed? There, too, you are right. And why? Because a sapient dunder-head who was in authority requested me to omit this passage. He did not believe that light passing through a small hole in the window-shutter of a darkened room impresses a view of external objects on white paper; nor that, as I suggested, the view might be made permanent if cast instead on ivory rubbed with nitrate of silver!” Vaughan was dumbfounded, and perhaps a little chagrined. “It is most singular!” he said. “Do you wonder now that I could not refrain from sending for you?” “I do not, indeed.” The Chancellor patted him kindly on the shoulder, and by a gesture made him resume his seat. “No, I could not refrain,” he continued; “the coincidence was too remarkable. If you come to sit where I sit, the chance will be still more singular.” Vaughan coloured with pleasure. “Alas!” he said, smiling, “one swallow, my lord, does not made a summer.” “Ah, my friend,” with a benevolent look. “But I know more of you than you think. You were in the service, I hear, and left it. _Cedant arma togæ_, eh?” “Yes.” “Well, I, too, after a fashion. Thirty years ago I served a gun with Professor Playfair in the Volunteer Artillery of Edinburgh. God knows,” he continued complacently, “if I had gone on with it, where I should have landed! Where the Duke is, perhaps! More surprising things have happened.”