It was now that the young astronomer began to take up once more the pursuit that had been so long interrupted. He felt that if he were to accomplish something, he must begin a series of observations with a definite end in view. There was also another motive than the desire of professional reputation--a wish to increase his worth in Miss Wycliffe's eyes by achievement. Her absence from town, though of only a few days' duration, freed him from the distraction which the very possibility of seeing her presented, and night after night he ascended to his watch-tower.
But he presently discovered that it was one thing to take observations on Mount Hamilton, where no other claims occupied part of his time, and quite another to watch by night and teach by day. The bishop was right in saying that his chief occupation must needs be the teaching of elementary mathematics to undergraduates. For any satisfactory results, prolonged observations must be made from twilight to dawn, and such periods of wakefulness were impossible when he must present himself before a class at nine o'clock in the morning. Not that this was necessary each day. His hours were irregular, but the morning classes were sufficiently numerous to break up the continuity of his observations, and to render their results unsure.
In this quandary, he ought, perhaps, to have abandoned his purpose and to have taken up some problem in pure mathematics, but here the perversity of human nature interposed. The forbidden, or at least difficult, road was the one he desired to travel, and he could not make up his mind to turn back, though he saw no prospect of going far. Instead, he began to make a few preliminary observations at random, and enjoyed the sight of the familiar constellations as one enjoys a return to old faces and associations. For the present he swept the skies leisurely, feasting on the infinite wonders which no consuetude could render commonplace. He longed for some unusual phenomenon in the sidereal tracts, a comet, or a temporary star, one of those strange wanderers that appear for a time, attain a brief and vivid maximum, and vanish into the darkness from which they have emerged. But only about a score of such objects had been credibly reported in historic times, and he searched the thoroughfare of the Milky Way, the region in which they were wont to appear, with small hope of reward.