MELEAGER A FANTASY BY H.M. VAUGHAN F.S.A. "_Wilt thou know how farre the Starres work upon us?_" Anatomy of Melancholy (Part I., sect. ii., sub-sect. iv.) LONDON MARTIN SECKER NUMBER FIVE JOHN STREET ADELPHI _First Published 1916_ CONTENTS PAGE PROLOGUE 7 PART ONE 15 PART TWO 199 EPIGRAPH 308 PROLOGUE (_By the Editor of the Original MS., the late_ Edward Cayley, F.S.A.) In giving the following narrative to the Press, I feel, as its editor, I am bound to write a short preface of apology or explanation to such of the public as care to read these pages. But I shall be as brief as possible. The manuscript, which is here produced in printed form, came into my personal possession through the kindness of Sir W---- Y----, the eminent traveller and mountaineer, who chanced upon it under the following circumstances. Whilst engaged in some work of exploration in the Andes, at the height of 12,000 feet or thereabouts above sea-level, he and his party had to traverse a dry stony ravine. On their passage upward one of the attendant guides chanced to espy amongst the loose stones and rubble a plain white metal cylinder sealed at both ends. Except for a conspicuous dent, evidently the result of a heavy fall, the cylinder itself appeared uninjured, and it was immediately brought by the finder to Sir W----, as the leader of the party. Sir W---- stopped for a moment to examine this strange treasure-trove, and, though much pressed for time, was able to loosen the cover and to ascertain that the cylinder contained a large scroll of fine vellum closely covered with minute writing. In the fading light, Sir W----, who had many matters of professional importance to think of, gave only a cursory glance at the manuscript itself, which he fancied must be connected with some of the ancient inhabitants of Peru. Without examining the parchment closely, he thereupon packed away the cylinder in his baggage and made no further effort to elucidate its nature until his return to Lima. My friend was here considerably astonished to find that the MS. which had so strangely fallen into his hands was written, not in some antique or unknown language and characters, but in neat though exceedingly small English script, with the sole exception of one short sentence in Latin--added apparently by another hand and in a different ink--in which the Latin writer begged the finder of the cylinder to take the enclosed scroll of vellum to the nearest English or American consulate. But for this Latin request, which was inserted at the beginning of the manuscript in a most prominent manner, the whole was written in fair nervous English, which it became easy to decipher, so soon as the reader had grown accustomed to the crabbedness of the writing, that had evidently been produced by an exiguity of space.