Vaughan stooped over the book, and having read looked up in perplexity. “But this passage,” he said, “was not in the paper read before the Royal Society in ’96?”
“In the paper read? No. Nor yet in the paper printed? There, too, you are right. And why? Because a sapient dunder-head who was in authority requested me to omit this passage. He did not believe that light passing through a small hole in the window-shutter of a darkened room impresses a view of external objects on white paper; nor that, as I suggested, the view might be made permanent if cast instead on ivory rubbed with nitrate of silver!”
Vaughan was dumbfounded, and perhaps a little chagrined. “It is most singular!” he said.
“Do you wonder now that I could not refrain from sending for you?”
“I do not, indeed.”
The Chancellor patted him kindly on the shoulder, and by a gesture made him resume his seat. “No, I could not refrain,” he continued; “the coincidence was too remarkable. If you come to sit where I sit, the chance will be still more singular.”
Vaughan coloured with pleasure. “Alas!” he said, smiling, “one swallow, my lord, does not made a summer.”
“Ah, my friend,” with a benevolent look. “But I know more of you than you think. You were in the service, I hear, and left it. Cedant arma togæ, eh?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I, too, after a fashion. Thirty years ago I served a gun with Professor Playfair in the Volunteer Artillery of Edinburgh. God knows,” he continued complacently, “if I had gone on with it, where I should have landed! Where the Duke is, perhaps! More surprising things have happened.”