CHAPTER NINE.
STUDY VERSUS DISCOVERY.
"Dear, dear, dear, dear!" in a tone full of reproach, and then a series of those peculiar sounds made by the tongue, and generally written "tut-tut-tut-tut!" for want of a better way--for it is like trying to express on paper the sound of a Bosjesman's _click cluck_ or the crowing of a cock.
The speaker was Mr Humphrey Deane--a tall, pale, gentlemanly-looking young university man, who, for reasons connected with his health, had arranged with Sir Francis Ladelle and the Doctor to come and stay at the Mount, where he was to have a comfortable home and the Doctor's attendance, a moderate stipend, and, in exchange, to help on the two lads in their studies every morning, the rest of the day being his own.
The plan had worked admirably; for Mr Deane was an earnest, able man, with a great love of learning, and always ready to display a warm friendship for boy or man who possessed similar tastes.

The lads liked him: he was always firm, but kindly; and he possessed that wonderful power of imparting the knowledge he possessed, never seeming at a loss for means to explain some puzzling expression in classic lore, or mathematical problem, so as to impress it strongly upon his pupil's mind.
The morning he uttered the words at the beginning of this chapter he was seated with the two boys in the long, low library at the Mount, whose heavy windows looked out upon a great, thick, closely-cropped yew hedge, which made the room dark and gloomy, for it completely shut off all view of the western sea, though at the same time it sheltered the house from the tremendous gales which swept over the island from time to time.
It was the morning after the discovery in so unpleasant a manner of the hole at the foot of the slope, and their projected visit of investigation in the afternoon so filled the lads' heads that there did not seem to be any room for study; and, in consequence, after patiently bearing the absence of mind and inattention of his pupils for a long time, the tutor began to be fidgety and, in spite of his placid nature, annoyed.
The Latin reading and rendering went on horribly, and the mathematics worse.

Vince tried hard; but as soon as he began to write down _a_ + _b_--_c_ = the square root of _x_, his mind wandered away to the rocks over the Black Scraw.

For that root of _x_ was so suggestive: _x_ represented the unknown quantity, and the Black Scraw was the unknown quantity of which he wanted to get to the root; and, over and over again, when the tutor turned to him, it was to find the boy, pen in hand, but with the ink in it dried up, while he sat gazing straight before him at imaginary grottoes and caverns, lit up by lanthorns which cast the black shadows of two explorers behind them on the water-smoothed granite floor.
But this did not apply only to Vince, for Mike was acting in a similar way; and at the end of an hour Mr Deane could bear it no longer, for it had happened at a time when he was not so well as usual, and it required a strong effort of will to be patient with the inattentive lads when suffering pain.
And so it was that at last he uttered the "dear dears" and "tut tuts," and roused the two boys from their dreams about what they would see in the afternoon.
"Are you unwell, Vincent Burnet ?" he said.
"Unwell, sir ?--oh no!" said the lad, colouring a little.
"You seem so strange in your manner this morning; and Michael Ladelle here is the same.

I hope you are not both sickening for something." "Oh, I'm quite well, sir," said Mike hurriedly.