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"At last, one fine morning, just as the vernal equinox had blown a few ships into harbor, a stranger was announced, and immediately recognized by the master of the house as a 'Don' something a Spanish merchant, whose kindness to a young member of the family had been often mentioned in his letters from Mexico.

His skin was smooth and soft; in his face was a beatific expression of tranquillity. He had consciously relinquished his body at the hour of mystic summoning. "The Lion of Bengal is gone!" I cried in a daze. I conducted the solemn rites on March 10th. His disciples later arrived from far and near to honor their guru at a vernal equinox memorial service.

Continuing thus her daily course, she passes under the rays of the sun on about the twenty-eighth day, and so completes the account of the month. I will next explain how the sun, passing through a different sign each month, causes the days and hours to increase and diminish in length. The sun, after entering the sign Aries and passing through one eighth of it, determines the vernal equinox.

On September 21st day and night are again equal all over the earth, and after this the North Pole is turned away from the sun, and does not receive its light again till the following March. It will thus be seen that from the autumnal to the vernal equinox the North Pole is in darkness and has a night of six months' duration, during which time the sun is not seen.

In spite of the fact that his hair is beginning to turn gray, he seems to be preserving well his robust constitution, while his regular features, his rather disquieting glance, his wide jaws and herculean frame give him the appearance of a Roman noble in disguise and make us involuntarily recall one of those three monks of whom Heine tells in his "Gods in Exile," who at the September equinox in the Tyrol used to cross a lake at midnight and each time place in the hand of the poor boatman a silver piece, cold as ice, which left him full of terror.

The savage and capricious Brown Man of the Moors, a being which seems the genuine descendant of the northern dwarfs, was supposed to be seen there frequently, especially after the autumnal equinox, when the fogs were thick, and objects not easily distinguished.

Considering the natural difficulties of the coast, and that the equinox was at hand, the numerical disparity was not absolutely desperate. Jersey is a strong place yet. In those days of sailing ships and weak artillery it was a gigantic fortress, if only held by a wholehearted and determined garrison. Had that but been now the case, which, however, it was not.

Even the wild gales of the equinox have their varieties, sounds of wind-shaken woods and waters, creak and clatter of sign and casement, hurricane puffs and down-rushing rain-spouts.

He ran here and there along the byways, examined the rock borders with an air of scientific questioning, and watched the other children playing by the muddy pond. We found shrubbery swelling with buds, also flappers walking hatless and blanched with talcum, accompanied by Urchins of a larger growth. Both these phenomena we took to be a sign of the coming equinox.

And now, for the last two days, the rains on this lower course of the river had been incessant, so that the old men had shaken their heads and talked of sixty years ago, when the same sort of weather, happening about the equinox, brought on the great floods, which swept the bridge away, and reduced the town to great misery.