and it seemed most
improbable that it had come to us from any distant part of the earth, as
we had become acquainted with the difficulty or impossibility of
bridging our very great distances with the resources then at human
command, and with the unavoidable exigence of the earth's convexity.

* * * * *

It was a few months after this that my father, returning from a climb in
the neighboring hills, complained of great weariness and a sort of mild
vertigo. I had become exceedingly endeared to him. I found him a most
unusual companion, and unnaturally separated as I had been from more
ordinary associations, our lives had assumed an almost fraternal
tenderness.

I was greatly troubled to see my father's illness, and begged him to
take rest; indeed, to leave the observatory for a while; to visit Christ
Church. We had made some very congenial acquaintances in Christ Church.
A family of Tontines and a gentleman and his daughter by the name of
Dodan had often visited us, and while we had become somewhat a subject
of perennial curiosity, and were more or less visited by curiosity
hunters and others, actuated by more intelligent motives, the Tontines
and the Dodans remained our only very intimate friends.

Indeed, Miss Dodan had come to me, buried in scientific speculations and
denied hitherto all female acquaintances, like a beam of light through
a sky not at all dark, but gray and pensive and sometimes almost
irksome. Miss Katharine Dodan was gentle, pretty, and unaffectedly
enthusiastic. Her interest in all equipment of our laboratories was
boundless. When I found myself alone with her at the big telescope
adjusting everything with--oh! such exquisite precision--and then
sometimes discovered my hand resting upon hers, or my head touching
those silken brown curves of hair that framed her white brow and
reddening cheeks, the throbbing pleasure was so sweet, so unexpected, so
strange, that I felt a new desire rise in my heart, and the newness of
life lifted me for a moment out of myself, and started those fires of
ambition and hope that only a lovely woman can awaken in the heart of a
man. I mention this circumstance that led to the fatal train of
occurrences that led to my father's death.

I urged my father to go to Christ Church and stay with the Dodans. Mr.
Dodan had frequently invited him, and Miss Dodan's brightness and her
cheerful art at the piano would, I know, cheer him, inured too lon