“Good-night; good-night.  God bless you.”  One weird sound after another came from boats that swam in the quivering moonbeams.  Then came the silence, broken only by the multitudinous whistling of the gaffs, and the gentle moan of the timbers.

The nightly talk came off as usual; and also as usual the great mathematician was forced to take the leading part, while Blair quizzed, and the ladies, after the fashion of their sex, stimulated the men to range from topic to topic.  Fullerton was watching Ferrier, just as I have seen a skilful professor of chemistry watching a tube for the first appearance of the precipitate.  This quiet thinker knew men, and he knew how to use them; moreover, he thought he saw in Ferrier a born king, and he strove to attract him just as he had striven to fascinate Miss Dearsley.  It was for the cause.

“What do you think of our work so far, Ferrier?”

“Good.  But I want more.”

Then, of course, Blair must needs have one of those wonderful jokes of his.  “Ha!  I want more!  A sort of scientific Oliver.  I want more!  What a Bashaw!  And what does his highness of many tails want?”

“Mr. Ferrier mustn’t be too exorbitant.  Science wears the seven-league boots, but we have to be content with modest lace-ups and Balmorals,” quietly observed Mrs. Walton.

“Oh! beautiful!  A regular flash of—­the real thing, don’t you know.  An epigram.  Most fahscinating!  Oh-h!”

Poor Tom’s elephantine delight over anything like a simile was always emphatic, no matter whether he saw the exact point or not, and I’m afraid that brilliant folk would have thought him perilously like a fool.  Happily his companions were ladies and gentlemen who were too simple to sneer, and they laughed kindly at all the big man’s floundering ecstasies.

Ferrier said, “When I have got what I want, I shall vary your programme if you will permit me.  Do you know, it struck me that those good souls are very like a live lizard cased in the dry clay?  He fits his mould, but he doesn’t see out of it.  I should like to give the men a little wider horizon.”

“Isn’t heaven wide enough?”

“But your men are always staring up at heaven.  Could you not give them a chance of looking round a bit?”

“What are you driving at?”

“Mr. Ferrier means that they do not employ all their faculties.  They are going cheerfully through a long cave because they see the sun at the mouth; but they don’t know anything about the earth on the top of the cave.”

This was a surprisingly long speech for Marion Dearsley.

“You take me exactly.  Now, Fullerton, I’m going to stay the winter out here.”

“You’re what?” interjected Blair.

“Yes, I’m going to see the winter through; and I mean to lay some plans before you.”

“The Bashaw has some glimmerings of sense.  Yes, the scientific creature has.  Go on, oh! many-tailed one.”