work, was not the man to take an injury without resenting it—if he could.

So now Derwent Smith had two enmities on hand:-that of Bob Rushton, the returned convict who knew his father's secret; and that of Guy Perceval, the honest country gentleman who had his own designs upon Hilda, and was inflexible in his ideas about the purity of race.

Bob, who was crafty in his own way, picked himself up as he had picked himself up once before in the yard. Contenting himself with a look to Edmund, and retreating out of arm's length of Derwent, he stood for a moment smiling and bowing with that sickening servility which, worse than open insolence, seems as if it courts a second assault. Derwent made a step towards him and ordered him imperiously to get out of his sight; and Bob obeyed, smiling to the end with an air that plainly told he did not mean to be put too much about by such a trifle as this. He had already borne more, all things considered; and one blow extra to a man accustomed to kicking, does not count for much. It would take more than the sudden passion of the young master to dislodge him, having made up his mind as he had done not to be dislodged by anyone or anything.

Had he had a sensitive fibre in his system, his life, such as it was, would have been intolerable to him long ago. Not a servant in the establishment would speak to him; not one would eat with him; and all had given notice to leave because of him. Bob stuck a flower between his lips and his hands in his pockets, and loafed about the place as contentedly as if he had been the chosen king of the company; eating his portion alone with as much appetite as if he had earned it by hard work instead of spending his day in scratching with a light hoe at the utmost four square yards of clean garden ground.

When Derwent came across him, and treated him, as he always did, with a disdain that was more offensive than blows, Bob used to put his cap on one side in a defying kind of manner, stroke his chin and snigger, as the servants called his peculiar half-insolent half-amused laugh. And once he said to the stable-boy :--

'Young cockerels are bold, Timms; ain't they now? But my belief is, if they knowed who could wring their necks with his tongue and his teeth they'd mend their manners sharp. What do you say, my lad, hey?'

But through it all he had kept faith loyally with his old mate and present master; and, save by his presence here at all, betrayed nothing of the nature of those links which bound him, a convicted thief, to Edmund Smith of Owlett. To-day however the burden

of his fellow creatures' abhorrence weighed on him more heavily than usual. The cook had curtailed his portion and flouted him when he asked for more; Taylor had driven him like a dog from the harness room; even Timms had perked up his head and pecked; and now the young master had knocked him down. And all for what? What had he done worse than others—or, 'weight for age,' so bad as that other?

Decidedly Providence is unfair and life more pain than pleasure, thought Bob in his own way; but when things go wrong, what so good as a comforting drop of drink to put them right? This was his theory and he meant to work it out this evening-no master's man but his own.

Accordingly he slipped away down to the King's Head, where he found by chance George Romer, head coachman at the Manor, who, having more liking for good fellowship than heed as to where he got it, had never been one to turn a cold shoulder to Bob. On the contrary he had been friends with him from the first, liking his company and not delicate as to his history. So the two drew together over their pipes and beer-with a shilling's-worth of gin to keep it steady and give it fire; and in the course of time their talk grew close and confidential as friendly companionship warmed Bob's heart, and the drink, to which he was not used of late, loosened his tongue.

416

The Origin of the Constellation-Figures.

BY RICHARD A. PROCTOR.

ALTHOUGH the strange figures which astronomers still allow to straggle over their star maps no longer have any real scientific interest, they still possess a certain charm not only for the student of astronomy, but for many who care little or nothing about astronomy as a science. When I was giving a course of twelve lectures in Boston, America, a person of considerable culture said to me, I wish you would lecture about the constellations; I care little about the sun and moon and the planets, and not much more about comets; but I have always felt great interest in the Bears and Lions, the Chained and Chaired Ladies, King Cepheus and the Rescuer, Perseus, Orion, Ophiuchus, Hercules, and the rest of the mythical and fanciful beings with which the old astronomers peopled the heavens. I say with Carlyle, "Why does not someone teach me the constellations, and make me at home in the starry heavens, which are always overhead, and which I don't half know to this day." We may notice, too, that the poets by almost unanimous consent have recognised the poetical aspect of the constellations, while they have found little to say about subjects which belong especially to astronomy as a science. Milton has indeed made an Archangel reason (not unskilfully for Milton's day) about the Ptolemaic and Copernican systems, while Tennyson makes frequent reference to astronomical theories. There sinks the nebulous star we call the Sun, if that hypothesis of theirs be sound,' said Ida; but she said no more, save 'let us down and rest,' as though the subject were wearisome to her. Again, in the Palace of Art, the soul of the poet having built herself that great house so royal rich and wide,' thither,

6

. . when all the deep unsounded skies
Shuddered with silent stars, she clomb,
And as with optic glasses her keen eyes
Pierced through the mystic dome,
Regions of lucid matter taking forms,
Brushes of fire, hazy gleams,

Clusters and beds of worlds and beelike swarms

Of suns, and starry streams:

She saw the snowy poles of moonless Mars,

That marvellous round of milky light

Below Orion, and those double stars
Whereof the one more bright

Is circled by the other.