I'll take care on him, sir,' replied Sam. 'Leave him to me.'

Where is he? What's he doing, Sam?' inquired Mr Winkle.

Bless his old gaiters,' rejoined Sam, looking out at the garden door.

He's a-keepin' guard in the lane vith that 'ere dark lantern, like a

amiable Guy Fawkes! I never see such a fine creetur in my days.

Blessed if I don't think his heart must ha' been born five- and-twenty

year arter his body, at least!'

Mr Winkle stayed not to hear the encomium upon his friend. He had

dropped from the wall; thrown himself at Arabella's feet; and by this

time was pleading the sincerity of his passion with an eloquence

worthy even of Mr Pickwick himself.

While these things were going on in the open air, an elderly gentleman

of scientific attainments was seated in his library, two or three houses

off, writing a philosophical treatise, and ever and anon moistening his

clay and his labours with a glass of claret from a venerable-looking

bottle which stood by his side. In the agonies of composition, the

elderly gentleman looked sometimes at the carpet, sometimes at the

ceiling, and sometimes at the wall; and when neither carpet, ceiling,

nor wall afforded the requisite degree of inspiration, he looked out of

the window. In one of these pauses of invention, the scientific

gentleman was gazing abstractedly on the thick darkness outside,

when he was very much surprised by observing a most brilliant light

glide through the air, at a short distance above the ground, and

almost instantaneously vanish. After a short time the phenomenon

was repeated, not once or twice, but several times; at last the

scientific gentleman, laying down his pen, began to consider to what

natural causes these appearances were to be assigned.

They were not meteors; they were too low. They were not glow-worms;

they were too high. They were not will-o'-the- wisps; they were not

fireflies; they were not fireworks. What could they be? Some

extraordinary and wonderful phenomenon of nature, which no

philosopher had ever seen before; something which it had been

reserved for him alone to discover, and which he should immortalise

his name by chronicling for the benefit of posterity. Full of this idea,

the scientific gentleman seized his pen again, and committed to paper

sundry notes of these unparalleled appearances, with the date, day,

hour, minute, and precise second at which they were visible: all of

which were to form the data of a voluminous treatise of great research

and deep learning, which should astonish all the atmospherical

wiseacres that ever drew breath in any part of the civilised globe.

He threw himself back in his easy-chair, wrapped in contemplations of

his future greatness. The mysterious light appeared more brilliantly

The Pickwick Papers