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, still struggling into light, through the glorious
delusions of alchemy and mysticism, imagined that, even in simple
practical operations, there were peculiar virtues in virgin gold and
certain precious stones. A link in the process upon which Adam was