t
days. She herself, too, had had, perhaps had still, the chance of the
golden forelock in another quarter. Might she not subject her after-life
to repentance, if her first hope should fail her when the second had
been irrevocably thrown away? The more she contemplated the sacrifice,
the greater it appeared. Possibly doubt had given preponderance to her
thoughts of Mr. Falconer; and certainly had caused them to repose in the
case of Lord Curryfin; but when doubt was thrown into the latter
scale also, the balance became more even. She would still give him his
liberty, if she believed that he wished it; for then her pride would
settle the question; but she must have more conclusive evidence on
the point than the Reverend Doctor's metaphorical deduction from a
mythological fiction.

In the evening, while the party in the drawing-room were amusing
themselves in various ways, Mr. MacBorrowdale laid a drawing on the
table, and said, 'Doctor, what should you take that to represent?'

_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ An unformed lump of I know not what.

_Mr. MacBorrowdale._ Not unformed. It is a flint formation of a very
peculiar kind.

_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ Very peculiar, certainly. Who on earth can have
amused himself with drawing a misshapen flint? There must be some riddle
in it; some aenigma, as insoluble to me as _Aelia Laelia Crispis_.{1}

1 This aenigma has been the subject of many learned
disquisitions. The reader who is unacquainted with it may
find it under the article 'aenigma' in the _Encyclopedia
Britannica_; and probably in every other encyclopaedia.

Lord Curryfin, and others of the party, were successively asked their
opinions. One of the young ladies guessed it to be the petrifaction
of an antediluvian mussel. Lord Curryfin said petrifactions were often
siliceous, but never pure silex; which this purported to be. It gave him
the idea of an ass's head; which, however, could not by any process have
been turned into flint.

Conjecture being exhausted, Mr. MacBorrowdale said, 'It is a thing
they call a Celt. The ass's head is somewhat germane to the matter. The
Artium Societatis Syndicus Et Socii have determined that it is a weapon
of war, evidently of human manufacture. It has been found, with many
others like it, among bones of mammoths and other extinct animals, and
is therefore held to prove that men and mammoths were contemporaries.'

_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ A weapon of war? Had it a ha