"One eccentricity the more in an eccentric career, my friend. I found a treasure by the wayside; and if you can but hold out long enough to make the great discovery on the threshold of which so many an adept has given up the ghost--" "Let us not speak of that," interrupted the old man nervously; "there are some things too sublime to be debated as your English Parliament debates a vote of credit or a declaration of war. Those who have gone down to the grave have carried too many of their secrets with them. The approach to the great secret is clouded with darkness, beset with difficulty. Yet who that has searched the secrets of Nature can doubt that there is somewhere in her mysterious realm the vital fire which can prolong the life of man, as surely as there are mineral and vegetable powers which can regulate the blood in the veins, and permeate man's whole frame with healing influences? Is there anything more miraculous in the idea of life prolonged indefinitely than in the spectacle of a fever-patient cured at the point of death? or of a brain distraught restored to sense and calmness by the physician's art?" * * * * * Lord Lavendale devoted the next morning to an interview with his steward, and while master and man were closeted in his lordship's study, Herrick Durnford set out for a long morning's ramble in the park, pleased to be free and alone--a privilege which he rarely enjoyed, as Lavendale hated solitude. It was a lovely morning, with all the freshness of spring and all the brightness of summer. There had been cold winds all through April, and the woods had worn their wintry russet longer than usual; but now all at once, like the unfolding of a scene in fairyland, the trees had burst into leaf, and endless varieties of vernal colour shone radiant against the cloudless blue of a May morning. Herrick, who worshipped Nature's loveliness, and who had been pent in cities of late, felt almost drunken with rapture as he roamed in those dewy glades, where every turn of the path revealed some new picture. He had some touch of poetry in his soul, which still lingered there after a youth of folly; and as the years went on there had come graver hours, in which the vanity and evil of his life had been as plain to his eyes as it had ever been in the sight of his worst enemy. He had been baptised Herrick at the desire of his mother, who was a descendant of the poet's family; and now on this fair May morning, amidst the changeful lights and shadows, his sympathy with Nature was keen as that of him who sang the glory of the daffodil and the brief beauty of the rose.