The week that followed was one in which autumn flung out all her brave banners in a final pageantry. The nights were cold and still, with stars peculiarly brilliant. Each morning the mists hung like fleecy cobwebs in the valley, filaments that parted and drifted away at the touch of the sun, disclosing the magic work of the nocturnal frosts upon the foliage of the trees. It seemed to Leigh, looking from his eyrie, that Nature had never before painted a panorama of such wondrous beauty. Here a solitary elm in the meadow below the cliff, in the region which the collegians called "over the rock," stood forth all crimson against the green sward; further on, the woods began, masses of yellow and red maples, with scattered pines and oaks of more sombre hue, billowing gently upward toward the blue of the distant skyline. It was now that the young astronomer began to take up once more the pursuit that had been so long interrupted. He felt that if he were to accomplish something, he must begin a series of observations with a definite end in view. There was also another motive than the desire of professional reputation--a wish to increase his worth in Miss Wycliffe's eyes by achievement. Her absence from town, though of only a few days' duration, freed him from the distraction which the very possibility of seeing her presented, and night after night he ascended to his watch-tower. But he presently discovered that it was one thing to take observations on Mount Hamilton, where no other claims occupied part of his time, and quite another to watch by night and teach by day. The bishop was right in saying that his chief occupation must needs be the teaching of elementary mathematics to undergraduates. For any satisfactory results, prolonged observations must be made from twilight to dawn, and such periods of wakefulness were impossible when he must present himself before a class at nine o'clock in the morning. Not that this was necessary each day. His hours were irregular, but the morning classes were sufficiently numerous to break up the continuity of his observations, and to render their results unsure.