added a word on my
plight; but this, beneath the lamp-light, he could not miss
perceiving, for my face and the left shoulder of my buff coat were a
mask of blood.

'H'm!'--he cut me short. 'It may sound to you unfeeling: but if
Heaven persists in sending me soldiers I had rather physic than feed
them:' and with that he stood aside as inviting me to enter. Be sure
I obeyed him gladly, and, stepping inside, rested my hand for a
moment against the jamb of a door that stood open to the right.
The ray of his lamp, as he held it near to examine me, gave me a
glimpse of the room within--of a table with cloth awry, of overturned
flagons lying as they had spilt their wine-stains, of chairs and
furniture pushed this way and that.

'So your predecessors have left me,' said the old gentleman, catching
the direction of my gaze and nodding. 'Whether or no they have left
me enough for the morning's breakfast is a matter my servant must
discover when he comes over from Holibourne at daylight.'

'They were Malignants, sir, as I guess: the Earl of Crawford's men.'

'Devil a groat care I what you call them, or they call themselves!
I study the heavens and take no heed of your sublunary divisions.
But they have eaten and drunk me out of house and home; at that hour,
too, when the most meteors were predicted: and what is worse they
invaded my garret in their clumsy jack-boots, and have thrown my
Orchestra Coeli out of gear. I was mending it when you knocked.
By the way,' he added more kindly, 'I can go on mending it while you
wash your wound, which will appear less horrid when cleansed of all
this blood. I have a fire upstairs, and hot water. Come.'

He closed the outer door and, taking me gently by the elbow,
half-supported me up the stairway, which was little better than a
ladder, and led direct to the strangest room I have ever set eyes on.

It was circular--in diameter perhaps twelve feet--with a high conical
roof. The roof had an inner lining of wood, and through a hole in
it--where a panel had been slid back--a large optic-glass, raised on
a pivot-stand, thrust its nose out into the night. Close within the
door stood an oaken press, and beside it, on a tripod, a brazier
filled with charcoal and glowing. A truckle-bed, a chair, and two
benches made up the rest of the furniture: and of the benches one was
crowded with all manner of tools--files by the score, pliers, small
hammers, besides lenses, compasses, rules, and a