the lake with lusty strokes, first placing a blanket over his knees, and he submitted:  he had no pride of that sort, he was utterly indifferent to the figure he cut beside his Amazon.  His gentleness of disposition, his brilliant conversations with those whom, like her father, he knew and trusted, captivated Augusta.  At this period of her life she was awakening to the glories of literature and taking a special course in that branch.  He talked to her of Gogol, Turgenief, and Dostoievsky, and seated on the log piazza read in excellent French “Dead Souls,” “Peres et Enfants,” and “The Brothers Karamazoff.”  At the end of August he went homeward almost gaily, quite ignorant of the arrow in his heart, until he began to miss Augusta Wishart’s ministrations—­and Augusta Wishart herself....  Then had followed that too brief period of intensive happiness....

The idea of remarriage had never occurred to her.  At eight and thirty, though tragedy had left its mark, it had been powerless to destroy the sweetness of a nature of such vitality as hers.  The innate necessity of loving remained, and as time went on had grown more wistful and insistent.  Insall and her Silliston neighbours were wont, indeed, gently to rally her on her enthusiasms, while understanding and sympathizing with this need in her.  A creature of intuition, Janet had appealed to her from the beginning, arousing first her curiosity, and then the maternal instinct that craved a mind to mould, a soul to respond to her touch....

Mrs. Maturin often talked to Janet of Insall, who had, in a way, long been connected with Silliston.  In his early wandering days, when tramping over New England, he used unexpectedly to turn up at Dr. Ledyard’s, the principal’s, remain for several weeks and disappear again.  Even then he, had been a sort of institution, a professor emeritus in botany, bird lore, and woodcraft, taking the boys on long walks through the neighbouring hills; and suddenly he had surprised everybody by fancying the tumble-down farmhouse in Judith’s Lane, which he had restored with his own hands into the quaintest of old world dwellings.  Behind it he had made a dam in the brook, and put in a water wheel that ran his workshop.  In play hours the place was usually overrun by boys....  But sometimes the old craving for tramping would overtake him, one day his friends would find the house shut up, and he would be absent for a fortnight, perhaps for a month—­one never knew when he was going, or when he would return.  He went, like his hero, Silas Simpkins, through the byways of New England, stopping at night at the farm-houses, or often sleeping out under the stars.  And then, perhaps, he would write another book.  He wrote only when he felt like writing.