rather tight trousers and the gentleman-jockey smile which he was wont to assume when he set out for a canter in the Row.  From all this it will be guessed that our Prophet was exceedingly amenable to the influences that throng at the heels of the human destiny.  Indeed, he was.  And some few months before this story opens it came about that he encountered a gentleman who was, in fact, the primary cause of this story being true.  Who was this gentleman? you will say.  Sir Tiglath Butt, the great astronomer, Correspondent of the Institute of France, Member of the Royal College of Science, Demonstrator of Astronomical Physics, author of the pamphlet, “Star-Gazers,” and the brochure, “An investigation into the psychical condition of those who see stars,” C.B.F.R.S. and popular member of the Colley Cibber Club in Long Acre.

The Prophet was introduced to Sir Tiglath at the Colley Cibber Club, and though Sir Tiglath, who was of a freakish disposition and much addicted to his joke declined to speak to him, on the ground that he (Sir Tiglath) had lost his voice and was unlikely to find it in conversation, the Prophet was greatly impressed by the astronomer’s enormous brick-red face, round body, turned legs, eyes like marbles, and capacity for drinking port-wine—­so much so, in fact that, on leaving the club, he hastened to buy a science primer on astronomy, and devoted himself for several days to a minute investigation of the Milky Way.

As there is a fascination of the earth, so is there a fascination of the heavens.  Along the dim, empurpled highways that lead from star to star, from meteorite to comet, the imagination travels wakefully by night, and the heart leaps as it draws near to the silver bosses of the moon.  Mrs. Merillia was soon obliged to permit the intrusion of a gigantic telescope into her pretty drawing-room, and found herself expected to converse at the dinner-table on the eight moons of Saturn, the belts of Jupiter, the asteroids of Mars and the phases of Venus.  These last she at first declined to discuss with a man, even though he were her grandson.  But she was won over by the Prophet’s innocent persuasiveness, and drawn on until she spoke almost as readily of the movements of the stars as formerly she had spoken of the movements of the Court from Windsor to London, and from London to Balmoral.  In truth, she expected that Hennessey’s passion for the comets would cease as had ceased his passion for the clergyman’s daughter; that his ardour for astronomy would die as had died his ardour for play-writing; that he would give up going to Corona Borealis and to the Southern Fish as he had given up going to the Derby.  Time proved her wrong.  As the days flew Hennessey became increasingly impassioned.  He was more often at the telescope than at the Bachelors’, and seemed on the way to become almost as gibbous as the planet Mars.  Even he slightly neglected his social duties; and on one terrible occasion forgot that he was engaged to dine at Cambridge House because he was assisting at a transit of Mercury.