As he paused, before going on his way, to thank the women for their courtesy, he was struck, as he had not been at first, by the appearance of the younger. So delicate she seemed, so daintily dressed, that he wondered to find her in this rustic setting. In her lap she held a small basket of eggs, and he guessed correctly that she was a visitor, waiting for the next car to Warwick. He asked the distance to his destination, and from her appeal to the older woman he learned that they were mother and daughter. During these few moments he began to realise that she might well be called a beauty, though her pale, ethereal type was not one that made a personal appeal to him. Her whole figure was steept in sunshine, and as her lips parted in a smile, he noticed how the strong rays penetrated her cheeks, filling her mouth with a faint pink light and intensifying the whiteness of her teeth. Just so they penetrated the shells of the white eggs in her basket. This picture remained with him for some time. The girl had appeared almost as fragile as the burden she carried, and suggested a train of thought concerning a certain type of New Englander whose strength is spent. It was such people, he reflected, who still clung to the old soil whence the sturdier representatives of the stock had long since departed, destined to give way at last to the swarming Polack, the French Canadian, and the Italian. The thought was melancholy, and coloured to no little extent the remainder of his ride. This incident, which was only one of several, was afterward revived to win a permanent place in his memory when he came to know the girl as Lena Harpster; for her part in the drama of the immediate future was destined to be connected strangely with his own. Seven o'clock found him again upon the tower, setting the telescope in order and preparing for his guests. He could scarcely expect them for an hour, but he walked restlessly about the enclosure of the parapet, breathing gratefully the cool night air. The lamp within his cabin shone dimly through the small windows upon his promenade. Beyond the battlements to the east, the evening star, which the Roman poet called Noctifer, began to bicker and brighten in the serene sky, and the last vestige of the sun's afterglow had now faded from the west. It was already as dark as a summer midnight. Small and continuous sounds came floating up from the city beyond. Immediately below he heard the occasional voices of students passing on the stone walk, and from the meadows on the west came the melancholy hoot of an owl.