Get on your wimple, Madge--quick,--while I go for it." "Why, Mistress Sibyll, that's your only pleasure when you sit all alone, the long summer days." "It will be more pleasure to remember that it supplied the wants of my father's guest," said Sibyll; and retracing the way up the stairs, she returned with the broken instrument, and despatched Madge with it, laden with instructions that the wine should be of the best.

She then once more mounted the rugged steps, and halting a moment at Marmaduke's door, as she heard his feeble step walking impatiently to and fro, she ascended higher, where the flight, winding up a square, dilapidated turret, became rougher, narrower, and darker, and opened the door of her father's retreat.
It was a room so bare of ornament and furniture that it seemed merely wrought out of the mingled rubble and rough stones which composed the walls of the mansion, and was lighted towards the street by a narrow slit, glazed, it is true,--which all the windows of the house were not,--but the sun scarcely pierced the dull panes and the deep walls in which they were sunk.

The room contained a strong furnace and a rude laboratory.

There were several strange-looking mechanical contrivances scattered about, several manuscripts upon some oaken shelves, and a large pannier of wood and charcoal in the corner.

In that poverty-stricken house, the money spent on fuel alone, in the height of summer, would have comfortably maintained the inmates; but neither Sibyll nor Madge ever thought to murmur at this waste, dedicated to what had become the vital want of a man who drew air in a world of his own.
This was the first thing to be provided for; and Science was of more imperative necessity than even Hunger.
Adam Warner was indeed a creature of remarkable genius,--and genius, in an age where it is not appreciated, is the greatest curse the iron Fates can inflict on man.