e (and he pointed to the
model), it seems already to provide, to my fantasy, the luxuries it will
one day give to us all in truth. Methought my very bed last night seemed
wondrous easy, and the coverings were warmer, for I woke not with the
cold."

"Ah," thought the sweet daughter, smiling through moist eyes, "while
my cares can smooth thy barren path through life, why should I cark and
pine?"

Their solitude was now occasionally broken in the evenings by the visits
of Nicholas Alwyn. The young goldsmith was himself not ignorant of the
simpler mathematics; he had some talent for invention, and took pleasure
in the construction of horologes, though, properly speaking, not a
part of his trade. His excuse for his visits was the wish to profit by
Warner's mechanical knowledge; but the student was so rapt in his
own pursuits, that he gave but little instruction to his visitor.
Nevertheless Alwyn was satisfied, for he saw Sibyll. He saw her in the
most attractive phase of her character,--the loving, patient, devoted
daughter; and the view of her household virtues affected more and more
his honest English heart. But, ever awkward and embarrassed, he gave
no vent to his feelings. To Sibyll he spoke little, and with formal
constraint; and the girl, unconscious of her conquest, was little less
indifferent to his visits than her abstracted father.

But all at once Adam woke to a sense of the change that had taken place;
all at once he caught scent of gold, for his works were brought to a
pause for want of some finer and more costly materials than the coins
in his own possession (the remnant of Marmaduke's gift) enabled him to
purchase. He had stolen out at dusk, unknown to Sibyll, and lavished
the whole upon the model; but in vain! The model in itself was, indeed,
completed; his invention had mastered the difficulty that it had
encountered. But Adam had complicated the contrivance by adding to it
experimental proofs of the agency it was intended to exercise. It was
necessary in that age, if he were to convince others, to show more
than the principle of his engine,--he must show also something of its
effects; turn a mill without wind or water, or set in motion some mimic
vehicle without other force than that the contrivance itself supplied.
And here, at every step, new obstacles arose. It was the misfortune
to science in those days, not only that all books and mathematical
instruments were enormously dear, but that the students,