iled to keep the cylinder at work. And now,
patiently as the spider re-weaves the broken web, his untiring ardour
was bent upon constructing a new cylinder of other materials. "Strange,"
he said to himself, "that the heat of the mover aids not the movement;"
and so, blundering near the truth, he laboured on.

Sibyll, meanwhile, seated herself abstractedly on a heap of fagots piled
in the corner, and seemed busy in framing characters on the dusty floor
with the point of her tiny slipper. So fresh and fair and young she
seemed, in that murky atmosphere, that strange scene, and beside that
worn man, that it might have seemed to a poet as if the youngest of the
Graces were come to visit Mulciber at his forge.

The man pursued his work, the girl renewed her dreams, the dark evening
hour gradually stealing over both. The silence was unbroken, for the
forge and the model were now at rest, save by the grating of Adam's
file upon the metal, or by some ejaculation of complacency now and
then vented by the enthusiast. So, apart from the many-noised, gaudy,
babbling world without, even in the midst of that bloody, turbulent, and
semi-barbarous time, went on (the one neglected and unknown, the other
loathed and hated) the two movers of the ALL that continues the airy
life of the Beautiful from age to age,--the Woman's dreaming Fancy and
the Man's active Genius.

CHAPTER II. MASTER ADAM WARNER GROWS A MISER, AND BEHAVES SHAMEFULLY.

For two or three days nothing disturbed the outward monotony of the
recluse's household. Apparently all had settled back as before the
advent of the young cavalier. But Sibyll's voice was not heard singing,
as of old, when she passed the stairs to her father's room. She sat with
him in his work no less frequently and regularly than before; but
her childish spirits no longer broke forth in idle talk or petulant
movements, vexing the good man from his absorption and his toils.
The little cares and anxieties, which had formerly made up so much of
Sibyll's day by forethought of provision for the morrow, were suspended;
for the money transmitted to her by Alwyn in return for the emblazoned
manuscripts was sufficient to supply their modest wants for months to
come. Adam, more and more engrossed in his labours, did not appear to
perceive the daintier plenty of his board, nor the purchase of some
small comforts unknown for years. He only said one morning, "It is
strange, girl, that as that gathers in lif