The dome of heaven was David Cheveral’s mistress. To his phantasy, a mistress ever variable and ever loved; whether chastely remote, ridden by the fine silver crescent, emblem of virginity; or passionate, low-brooding, full-mooned and crimson, pregnant with autumn promise; or yet high and cold, in winter magnificence, sparkling with the jewels that are beyond dreams of splendour; or yet again veiled and indifferent; or stormy, cloud-wracked with the anger of the gods; condescending now with exquisite intimacy, anon passing as irrevocably as Diana from her shepherd. Who that had once loved such a mistress could ever turn back to one of earth again? So thought the star-dreamer of Bindon. And this esthetic passion was at the same time his art and his life-work. It filled not only heart, but mind. Endless was the lesson to be learned, opening the road endlessly to others; untiring the labour to be expended; his own the genius to divine, to grasp, to translate; and his also every gratification, every reward! So thought the star-dreamer. He had drifted into a life of study and contemplation as solitary men drift into eccentricity; and if in its all absorbing tendency there lurked madness of a sort, there was a harmonious method in it; and to him, at least (precious boon!), it spelt peace of soul. Every day’s work of such a study meant a fresh conquest of the mind, noble and peaceful. Mighty conceptions unfolded themselves to an ever-soaring intellect and thrust back more and more the pigmy doings of this small earth into their proper insignificance. Meanwhile his sight was rejoiced with beauty ever renewed. The music of the spheres played its great harmonies to his fastidious ear; the rhythm of a universal poetry, too exquisite to find expression in mere words, settled upon a mind ever attuned to vastness, till the drab miseries of humanity seemed well-nigh fallen away, and the petty fret of everyday life, the chafing, the disillusion, the smart of pride, the cry of the senses, were as forgotten things.—His soul was filled with visions. Now on this evening, while Master Simon in his laboratory underground was being called by unexpected claims from his own line of abstraction, something equally startling had occurred to Sir David Cheveral in his observatory. He was pacing his airy platform on the top of the keep, under an exquisite and pensive sky of most benign charity. Never had he felt himself more uplifted to the empyrean, more detached from a sordid world, than at the beginning of this watch. Deep beyond deep spread the blue vasts above him. As the lover knows the soul of his beloved, so his vision, unaided, pierced into the heart of mysteries that even through the telescope would be veiled to the neophyte.