g to the Milky Way, and the points that cluster
round Perseus; Arcturus, white Vega and yellow Capella; the Twins,
and beyond them the Little Dog twinkling through a coppice of naked
trees to eastward; yet further round the Pleiads climbing, with red
Aldebaran after them; below them Orion's belt, and last of all,
Sirius flashing like a diamond, white and red, and resting on the
horizon where the dark pasture lands met the sky.

Then, growing flushed with his subject, he began to descant on these
stars, their distances and velocities; how that each was a sun,
careering in measureless space, each trailing a company of worlds
that spun and hurtled round it; that the Dog-star's light shone into
their eyes across a hundred trillion miles; that the star itself
swept along a thousand miles in a minute. He hurled figures at them,
heaping millions on millions. "See here"--and, turning the telescope
on its pivot, he sighted it carefully. "Look at that small star in
the Great Bear: that's Groombridge Eighteen-thirty. _He's_ two
hundred billions of miles away. _He_ travels two hundred miles a
second, does Groombridge Eighteen-thirty. In one minute Groombridge
Eighteen-thirty could go from here to Hong-Kong."

"Then damn Groombridge Eighteen-thirty!"

It was uttered in the bated tone that night enforces: but it came
with a groan. The old gentleman faced round in amazement.

"He means, sir," explained the woman, who had grown to understand
Adam passing well, "my man means that it's all too big for us.
We've strayed out of prison, sir, and shall feel safer back again,
looking at all this behind bars."

She reached out a hand to Adam: and this time it was he that
followed, as one blinded and afraid. In three months they were back
again at the gates of the paradise they had wandered from.
There stood a warder before it, clad in blue: but he carried no
flaming sword, and the door opened and let them in.

BESIDE THE BEE-HIVES.

On the outskirts of the village of Gantick stand two small
semi-detached cottages, coloured with the same pale yellow wash,
their front gardens descending to the high-road in parallel lines,
their back gardens (which are somewhat longer) climbing to a little
wood of secular elms, traditionally asserted to be the remnant of a
mighty forest. The party hedge is heightened by a thick screen of
white-thorn on which the buds were just showing pink when I took up
my lodging in the left-hand cottage