This was hardly a matter for surprise to such as had inherited from their forefathers a profound distrust in Frenchmen.
The brief February days followed each other with that monotony, marked by small events, that quickly lays the years aside.

Loo lingered on, with a vague indecision in his mind which increased as the weeks passed by and the spell of the wide marsh-lands closed round his soul.

He took up again those studies which the necessity of earning a living had interrupted years before, and Septimus Marvin, who had never left off seeking, opened new historical gardens to him and bade him come in and dig.
Nearly every morning Loo went to the rectory to look up an obscure reference or elucidate an uncertain period.

Nearly every evening, after the rectory dinner, he returned the books he had borrowed, and lingered until past Sep's bedtime to discuss the day's reading.

Septimus Marvin, with an enthusiasm which is the reward of the simple-hearted, led the way down the paths of history while Loo and Miriam followed--the man with the quick perception of his race, the woman with that instinctive and untiring search for the human motive which can put heart into a printed page of history.
Many a whole lifetime has slipped away in such occupations; for history, already inexhaustible, grows in bulk day by day.