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 from your valuable services as a calculating machine."

Bellew Blair, the last and, in the worldly sense, by far the ablest of the recruits of the Long Bow, was a man in early middle age, square built, but neat in figure and light on his feet, clad in a suit of leather. He mostly moved about so quickly that his figure made more impression than his face; but when he sat down smoking, in one of his rare moments of leisure, as now, it could be remarked that his face was rather calm than vivacious; a short square face with a short resolute nose, but reflective eyes much lighter than his close black hair.

"It's quite Homeric," he added, "the two armies fighting for the body of an astronomer. You would be a sort of a symbol anyhow, since they started that insanity of calling you insane. Nobody has any business to bother you about the personal side of the matter."

Green seemed to be ruminating, and the last phrase awoke him to a decision. He began to talk. Quite straightforwardly, though with a certain schoolboy awkwardness, he proceeded to tell his friend the whole of his uncouth love-story—the overturning of his spiritual world to the tune the old cow died of, or rather danced to.