ne preacher, who gave long and inspiring sermons from what many
men would have considered unprofitable texts. "An excellent proof," he
would add, "of the truth of the doctrine of direct verbal inspiration."

Adrian Borlsover was exceedingly clever with his hands. His penmanship
was exquisite. He illustrated all his scientific papers, made his own
woodcuts, and carved the reredos that is at present the chief feature of
interest in the church at Borlsover Conyers. He had an exceedingly
clever knack in cutting silhouettes for young ladies and paper pigs and
cows for little children, and made more than one complicated wind
instrument of his own devising.

When he was fifty years old Adrian Borlsover lost his sight. In a
wonderfully short time he had adapted himself to the new conditions of
life. He quickly learned to read Braille. So marvellous indeed was his
sense of touch that he was still able to maintain his interest in
botany. The mere passing of his long supple fingers over a flower was
sufficient means for its identification, though occasionally he would
use his lips. I have found several letters of his among my father's
correspondence. In no case was there anything to show that he was
afflicted with blindness, and this in spite of the fact that he
exercised undue economy in the spacing of lines. Toward the close of his
life the old man was credited with powers of touch that seemed almost
uncanny: it has been said that he could tell at once the colour of a
ribbon placed between his fingers. My father would neither confirm nor
deny the story.

I

Adrian Borlsover was a bachelor. His elder brother George had married
late in life, leaving one son, Eustace, who lived in the gloomy Georgian
mansion at Borlsover Conyers, where he could work undisturbed in
collecting material for his great book on heredity.

Like his uncle, he was a remarkable man. The Borlsovers had always been
born naturalists, but Eustace possessed in a special degree the power of
systematizing his knowledge. He had received his university education in
Germany, and then, after post-graduate work in Vienna and Naples, had
travelled for four years in South America and the East, getting together
a huge store of material for a new study into the processes of
variation.

He lived alone at Borlsover Conyers with Saunders his secretary, a man
who bore a somewhat dubious reputation in the district, but whose
powers as a mathematician, combined with his