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 Algorithms
in a Nutshell
SECOND EDITION
George T. Heineman, Gary Pollice & Stanley Selkow
Algorithms in a Nutshell
by George T. Heineman, Gary Pollice, and Stanley Selkow
Copyright © 2016 George Heineman, Gary Pollice and Stanley Selkow. All rights
reserved.
Printed in the United States of America.
Published by O’Reilly Media, Inc., 1005 Gravenstein Highway North, Sebastopol, CA
95472.
O’Reilly books may be purchased for educational, business, or sales promotional use.
Online editions are also available for most titles (http://safaribooksonline.com). For more
information, contact our corporate/institutional sales department: 800-998-9938 or
[email protected].
Editors: Andy Oram and Mary Treseler

Production Editor: Colleen Lobner

Copyeditor: Christina Edwards

Proofreader: Jasmine Kwityn

Indexer: Judy McConville

Interior Designer: David Futato

Cover Designer: Karen Montgomery

Illustrator: Rebecca Demarest

October 2008: First Edition

March 2016: Second Edition

Revision History for the Second Edition
2016-03-09: First Release

See http://oreilly.com/catalog/errata.csp?isbn=9781491948927 for release details.

Nutshell Handbook, the Nutshell Handbook logo, and the O’Reilly logo are registered
trademarks of O’Reilly Media, Inc. Algorithms in a Nutshell, the cover image of a hermit
crab, and related trade dress are trademarks of O’Reilly Media, Inc.
While the publisher and the authors have used good faith efforts to ensure that the
information and instructions contained in this work are accurate, the publisher and the
authors disclaim all responsibility for errors or omissions, including without limitation
responsibility for damages resulting from the use of or reliance on this work. Use of the
information and instructions contained in this work is at your own risk. If any code
samples or other technology this work contains or describes is subject to open source
licenses or the intellectual property rights of others, it is your responsibility to ensure that
your use thereof complies with such licenses and/or rights.
978-1-491-94892-7
[LSI]
Preface to the Second Edition

Revising a book for a new edition is always an arduous task. We wanted to make sure that
we retained all the good qualities of the first edition, published in 2009, while fixing some
of its shortcomings and adding additional material. We continue to follow the principles
outlined in the first edition:
Use real code, not just pseudocode to describe algorithms

Separate the algorithm from the problem being solved

Introduce just enough mathematics

Support mathematical analysis empirically

As we updated this second edition, we reduced the length of our text descriptions and
simplified the layout to make room for new algorithms and additional material. We believe
we continue to offer a Nutshell perspective on an important area of computer science that
has significant impact on practical software systems.
Changes to the Second Edition
In updating this book for the second edition, we followed these principles:

Select New Algorithms

After the publication of the first edition, we often received comments such as “Why
was Merge Sort left out?” or “Why didn’t you cover Fast Fourier Transform
(FFT)?” It was impossible to satisfy all of these requests, but we were able to add the
following algorithms:
Fortune’s algorithm, to compute the Voronoi Diagram for a set of points
(“Voronoi Diagram”)

Merge Sort, for both internal memory data as well as external files (“Merge Sort”)

Multithreaded Quicksort (“Parallel Algorithms”)

AVL Balanced Binary Tree implementation (“Solution”)

A new Spatial Algorithms chapter (Chapter 10) contains R-Trees and Quadtrees

In total, the book covers nearly 40 essential algorithms.

Streamline Presentation
To make room for the new material, we revised nearly every aspect of the first edition.
We simplified the template used to describe each algorithm and reduced the
accompanying descriptions.

Add Python Implementations

Rather than reimplement existing algorithms in Python, we intentionally used Python
to implement most of the new algorithms added.

Manage Code Resources

The code for the first edition was made available as a ZIP file. We have since
transitioned to a GitHub repository. Over the years we improved the quality of the
code and its documentation. We have incorporated a number of blog entries that were
written after the publication of the first edition. There are over 500 unit test cases and
we use code coverage tools to ensure coverage of 99% of our Java code. In total, the
code repository consists of over 110 KLOC.
Audience
We intend this book to be your primary reference when seeking practical information on
how to implement or use an algorithm. We cover a range of existing algorithms for solving
a large number of problems and adhere to the following principles:
When describing each algorithm, we use a stylized template to properly frame each
discussion and explain the essential points of each algorithm

We use a variety of languages to implement each algorithm (including C, C++, Java,

and Python). In doing so, we make concrete the discussion of algorithms and speak
using languages you are already familiar with

We describe the expected performance of each algorithm and empirically provide

evidence to support these claims

We intend this book to be most useful to software practitioners, programmers, and

designers. To meet your objectives, you need access to a quality resource that explains real
solutions to practical algorithms you need to solve real problems. You already know how
to program in a variety of programming languages. You know about the essential
computer science data structures, such as arrays, linked lists, stacks, queues, hash tables,
binary trees, and undirected and directed graphs. You don’t need to implement these data
structures, since they are typically provided by code libraries.
We expect you will use this book to learn about tried and tested solutions to solve
problems efficiently. You will learn some advanced data structures and novel ways to
apply standard data structures to improve the efficiency of algorithms. Your problem-
solving abilities will improve when you see the key decision for each algorithm that make
for efficient solutions.
Conventions Used in This Book
The following typographical conventions are used in this book:

Code
All code examples appear in this typeface.
This code is replicated directly from the code repository and
reflects real code. All code listings are “pretty-printed” to
highlight the appropriate syntax of the programming language.

Italic
Indicates key terms used to describe algorithms and data structures. Also used when
referring to variables within a pseudocode description of an example.

Constant width
Indicates the name of actual software elements within an implementation, such as a
Java class, the name of an array within a C implementation, and constants such as
true or false.

We cite numerous books, articles, and websites throughout the book. These citations
appear in text using parentheses, such as (Cormen et al., 2009), and each chapter closes
with a listing of references used within that chapter. When the reference citation
immediately follows the name of the author in the text, we do not duplicate the name in
the reference. Thus, we refer to the Art of Computer Programming books by Donald
Knuth (1998) by just including the year in parentheses.
All URLs used in the book were verified as of January 2016, and we tried to use only
URLs that should be around for some time. We include small URLs, such as
http://www.oreilly.com, directly within the text; otherwise, they appear in footnotes and
within the references at the end of a chapter.
Using Code Examples
Supplemental material (code examples, exercises, etc.) is available for download at
https://github.com/heineman/algorithms-nutshell-2ed.
This book is here to help you get your job done. In general, if example code is offered
with this book, you may use it in your programs and documentation. You do not need to
contact us for permission unless you’re reproducing a significant portion of the code. For
example, writing a program that uses several chunks of code from this book does not
require permission. Selling or distributing a CD-ROM of examples from O’Reilly books
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from this book into your product’s documentation does require permission.
We appreciate, but do not require, attribution. An attribution usually includes the title,
author, publisher, and ISBN. For example: “Algorithms in a Nutshell, Second Edition by
George T. Heineman, Gary Pollice, and Stanley Selkow. Copyright 2016 George
Heineman, Gary Pollice and Stanley Selkow, 978-1-4919-4892-7.”
If you feel your use of code examples falls outside fair use or the permission given above,
feel free to contact us at [email protected].
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Acknowledgments
We would like to thank the book reviewers for their attention to detail and suggestions,
which improved the presentation and removed defects from earlier drafts: From the first
edition: Alan Davidson, Scot Drysdale, Krzysztof Duleba, Gene Hughes, Murali Mani,
Jeffrey Yasskin, and Daniel Yoo. For the second edition: Alan Solis, Robert P. J. Day, and
Scot Drysdale.
George Heineman would like to thank those who helped instill in him a passion for
algorithms, including Professors Scot Drysdale (Dartmouth College) and Zvi Galil
(Columbia University, now Dean of Computing at Georgia Tech). As always, George
thanks his wife, Jennifer, and his children Nicholas (who has now started learning how to
program) and Alexander (who loves making origami creations from the printed rough
drafts of this edition).
Gary Pollice would like to thank his wife Vikki for 46 great years. He also wants to thank
the WPI computer science department for a great environment and a great job.
Stanley Selkow would like to thank his wife, Deb. This book was another step on their
long path together.
Chapter 1. Thinking in Algorithms

Algorithms matter! Knowing which algorithm to apply under which set of circumstances
can make a big difference in the software you produce. Let this book be your guide to
learning about a number of important algorithm domains, such as sorting and searching.
We will introduce a number of general approaches used by algorithms to solve problems,
such as the Divide and Conquer or Greedy strategy. You will be able to apply this
knowledge to improve the efficiency of your own software.
Data structures have been tightly tied to algorithms since the dawn of computing. In this
book, you will learn the fundamental data structures used to properly represent
information for efficient processing.
What do you need to do when choosing an algorithm? We’ll explore that in the following
sections.
Understand the Problem
The first step in designing an algorithm is to understand the problem you want to solve.
Let’s start with a sample problem from the field of computational geometry. Given a set of
points, P, in a two-dimensional plane, such as shown in Figure 1-1, picture a rubberband
that has been stretched around the points and released. The resulting shape is known as the
convex hull (i.e., the smallest convex shape that fully encloses all points in P). Your task is
to write an algorithm to compute the convex hull from a set of two-dimensional points.
Given a convex hull for P, any line segment drawn between any two points in P lies
totally within the hull. Let’s assume we order the points in the hull clockwise. Thus, the
hull is formed by a clockwise ordering of h points L0, L1, … ,Lh-1 as shown in Figure 1-2.
Each sequence of three hull points Li, Li+1, Li+2 creates a right turn.

Figure 1-1. Sample set of 15 points in plane

 Figure 1-2. Computed convex hull for points

With just this information, you can probably draw the convex hull for any set of points,
but could you come up with an algorithm (i.e., a step-by-step sequence of instructions that
will efficiently compute the convex hull for any set of points)?
What we find interesting about the convex hull problem is that it doesn’t seem to be easily
classified into existing algorithmic domains. There doesn’t seem to be any linear sorting of
the points from left to right, although the points are ordered in clockwise fashion around
the hull. Similarly, there is no obvious search being performed, although you can identify
a line segment on the hull because the remaining n – 2 points are “to the right” of that line
segment in the plane.
Naïve Solution
Clearly a convex hull exists for any collection of three or more points. But how do you
construct one? Consider the following idea. Select any three points from the original
collection and form a triangle. If any of the remaining n – 3 points are contained within
this triangle, then they cannot be part of the convex hull. We’ll describe the general
process using pseudocode, and you will find similar descriptions for each of the
algorithms in the book.

SLOW HULL SUMMARY

Best, Average, Worst: O(n4)

slowHull (P)
foreach p0 in P do
foreach p1 in {P-p0} do
foreach p2 in {P-p0-p1} do
foreach p3 in {P-p0-p1-p2} do
if p3 is contained within Triangle(p0,p1,p2) then
mark p3 as internal

create array A with all non-internal points in P

determine leftmost point, left, in A
sort A by angle formed with vertical line through left
return A

Points p0, p1, p2 form a triangle.

Points not marked as internal are on convex hull.

These angles (in degrees) range from –90 to 90.

In the next chapter, we will explain the mathematical analysis that shows why this
approach is considered to be inefficient. This pseudocode summary explains the steps that
produce a convex hull for each input set; in particular, it created the convex hull in
Figure 1-2. Is this the best we can do?
Intelligent Approaches
The numerous algorithms in this book are the results of striving for more efficient
solutions to existing code. We identify common themes in this book to help you solve your
problems. There are many different ways to compute a convex hull. In sketching these
approaches, we give you a sample of the material in the chapters that follow.
Greedy
Here’s a way to construct the convex hull one point at a time:
1. Remove from P its lowest point, low, which must be part of the hull.

2. Sort the remaining n – 1 points in descending order by the angle formed in relation
to a vertical line through low. These angles range from 90 degrees for points to the
left of the line down to –90 degrees for points to the right. pn–2 is the rightmost point
and p0 is the leftmost point. Figure 1-3 shows the vertical line and the angles to it
from each point as light lines.

3. Start with a partial convex hull formed from three points in this order {pn–2, low,
p0}. Try to extend the hull by considering, in order, each of the points p1 to pn–2. If
the last three points of the partial hull ever turn left, the hull contains an incorrect
point that must be removed.

4. Once all points are considered, the partial hull completes. See Figure 1-3.
Figure 1-3. Hull formed using a Greedy approach
Divide and Conquer
We can divide the problem in half if we first sort all points, P, left to right by x coordinate
(breaking ties by considering their y coordinate). From this sorted collection, we first
compute the upper partial convex hull by considering points in order left to right from p0
to pn–1 in the clockwise direction. Then the lower partial convex hull is constructed by
processing the same points in order right to left from pn–1 to p0 again in the clockwise
direction. Convex Hull Scan (described in Chapter 9) computes these partial hulls (shown
in Figure 1-4) and merges them together to produce the final convex hull.

Figure 1-4. Hull formed by merging upper and lower partial hulls
Parallel
If you have a number of processors, partition the initial points by x coordinate and have
each processor compute the convex hull for its subset of points. Once these are completed,
the final hull is stitched together by the repeated merging of neighboring partial solutions.
A parallel approach divides subproblems among a number of processors to speed up the
overall solution.
Figure 1-5 shows this approach on three processors. Two neighboring hulls are stitched
together by adding two tangent lines—one on the top and one on the bottom—and then
eliminating the line segments contained within the quadrilateral formed by these two lines.
Approximation
Even with these improvements, there is still fixed lower bound performance for computing
the convex hull that cannot be beaten. However, instead of computing the exact answer,
perhaps you would be satisfied with an approximate answer that can be computed quickly
and whose error can be accurately determined.
The Bentley–Faust–Preparata algorithm constructs an approximate convex hull by
partitioning the points into vertical strips (Bentley et al., 1982). Within each strip, the
maximum and minimum points (based on y coordinate) are identified (they are drawn in
Figure 1-6 with squares around the points). Together with the leftmost point and the
rightmost point in P, these extreme points are stitched together to form the approximate
convex hull. In doing so, it may happen that a point falls outside the actual convex hull, as
shown for point p1 in Figure 1-6.
Figure 1-5. Hull formed by parallel constructions and stitching
Figure 1-6. Hull formed by approximate computation
Generalization
It is often possible to solve a more general problem whose solution can be readily
converted to solve your specific problem. The Voronoi diagram (Preparata and Shamos,
1993) is a geometric structure that divides a set of points in a plane into regions, each one
of which is anchored by one of the original points in the input set P. Each region Ri is the
set of points (x, y) in the plane closer to the anchor point, pi, than any other point in P.
Once the Voronoi diagram is computed, these regions can be visualized as shown in
Figure 1-7. The gray regions are semi-infinite and you can observe that these match
directly to the points on the convex hull. This observation leads to the following
algorithm:
1. Compute the Voronoi diagram for P.

2. Initialize the hull with the lowest point, low, in P and start at its associated region.

3. In clockwise fashion, visit the neighboring region that shares an infinitely long side
and add that region’s anchor point to the hull.

4. Continue adding points until the original region is encountered.

Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
 "That's all right. If you hear the weight fall in the passage, that's
mother," said Madeline, explaining to Melicent: "You see, it gives us a
minute to reform in."

They all went to a cupboard, pulled out work, thimbles, and so on,
arranged them on the table, chairs in place; then threw themselves on the
floor, in the various attitudes which their weak, overgrown spines
demanded, with pillows wedged under them.

"Now for peace and happiness," said Gwen. "Oh, it was grand to hear
you stand up to them, my dear! But it's no good, you know; you will have to
knuckle under. They've got nothing else to do but bully us; and after all, it's
not much they can do, you know. It's as easy as possible to circumvent
them."

"Oh, hold your tongue, Gwen! don't chatter so," said Madeline crossly.
"Give Melicent a chance. Go on, Melicent, tell us all about it. How was
your arm hurt?"

Melicent looked surprised. "I told you I promised Uncle Edmund not to
say," she replied.

"Oh, gammon! we absolve you from that," laughed Theo, slipping a

warm arm about her cousin's neck.

"But I can't absolve myself, you see," said Millie soberly.

"Do you mean to say you won't tell us?"

"I never break my word."

Gwendolen laughed.

"We're five against one, and the youngest is as big as you," she said,
half in fun, half menacing.

Millie smiled her own little smile of disdain.

 "I'm more than a match for the lot of you," she said coolly. "I shall say
just what I think to you, as I did to Aunt Minna. And it's this. I hate
underhand ways."

Miss Lathom, who was seemingly poring over the correction of some
exercises, grew uncomfortably red.

"We're not underhand," said Gwen hotly. "'Tommy'"—indicating her

preceptress with a wave of the hand—"knows all about our goings on."

"Tommy" looked up nervously.

"When you have lived here a little while, Miss Lutwyche," she said,
"you will see that the poor girls must have some indulgences. Their mother
expects impossibilities."

"Well, why do they stand it?" asked Millie.

"We don't stand it," returned Maddie. "But you had better all shut up,
girls; perhaps Melicent's a tell-tale."

"If you had any sense, you'd see that I've just proved that I'm not,"
remarked Melicent.

"How have you proved it?"

"If I keep my word to Uncle Edmund, of course I shall keep my word to

you. I promise not to tell tales; and, when I promise, you can go away and
bet on it."

The universal squeal of merriment at her funny phrase restored

harmony.

"Of course," said Gwen, "I see that it's best to be straightforward; but
we're not allowed to be. We simply have to make our own pleasures,
unknown to them. We should never read a book, nor get a letter, nor meet a
soul, nor do anything but get up, have meals, do lessons, go to bed. Mother
won't let us read a book she hasn't read first; and as she never opens a book
herself from year's end to year's end, there is an end of that. We mustn't
have a letter unless she sees it; so of course we have to have our letters sent,
addressed to Tommy, to Bensdale Post Office; and then there's the
adventure of walking over to fetch them. You mayn't go out without saying
where you've been, nor spend a halfpenny without telling her what you
bought. She must really expect us to cheat, you know; and so we do."

"Maddie's going on for eighteen, and Gwen only a year younger,"

chimed in Theo, "and they're not supposed even to know what a young man
is, let alone think about one. Gwen's awfully gone on Freshfield, who is Sir
Joseph Burmester's agent. Well, if it was guessed, I don't know what would
happen, for you see Freshfield is not our social equal—"

"My dears," broke in Miss Lathom, who was on thorns, "I think all this
is very imprudent. Let your cousin wait a while, and see how she likes her
aunt's system."

"I shall dislike it very much," said Melicent; "but I shall say so. Why
don't you speak out?"

"Because we're dead sick of rows," said Maddie sulkily. "There were
nothing but rows till Tommy came. No governess would stay; they simply
couldn't stand mother. Then at last Tommy turned up, and we saw what a
decent old sort she was, so we thought out our plans, and now we do get our
fun somehow, and as long as we hold our tongues at meals, it's all right."

"Well, I'm very sorry for you," said Millie, "but I think it would be
much simpler to say what you mean. The strongest always wins. If you
stuck together, they would have to give in."

The girls laughed sardonically. "You don't know mother," they said.

"Well, we shall soon see," said Barbie, who was the silent one of the
five. "Let Millie try her way, and see what happens."

Millie laughed. "I certainly shan't try yours," she said.

"But you won't side against us with mother?" suddenly said Gwen.
 "Rather not. That isn't my way."

"Are you never afraid of anybody?" asked Theo earnestly.

"Of course not; what can people do?" contemptuously asked the girl
who had been sjambokked.

Theo cuddled up against this new champion as if the sense of strength

were pleasant to her.

"Show us your love-letter, won't you, darling?" she said persuasively.

"Certainly not," replied Millie at once.

"Then I won't show you my notes from Freshfield," said Gwen.

"Of course not. It's mean to show men's letters."

"We shouldn't do such a thing, except just among ourselves," replied

Maddie indignantly; "and we hoped you'd be one of us, though goodness
knows there's more than enough of us already."

"Look here," said Gwen eagerly, "we know you must be the real kind of
natural girl—not the sort like mother believes in, Ethel May in the Daisy
Chain, you know—we know you are not that sort, or you would not be
having lovers to write to you all the way from Africa. You do like pretty
clothes, and dancing, and young men—"

"No, I don't," said Millie, in her decided way. "I've had enough of young
men to last me a good while. I want to see no more young men for years to
come. I only want one thing really badly"—she looked almost pleadingly at
Tommy's red, snub-nosed countenance, as if her sole hope lay there—"I
want to learn!" cried out the girl who was to corrupt the Vicarage
household.

"To learn!" The words were echoed in six different tones.

"Not lessons?" asked Babs incredulously.

 "Everything," replied Millie, resting her pointed chin on her small hand.
"I want to know things, and understand them, and find out how to earn my
living; to do something ... or make something ... I don't know what, as yet. I
want to get a grip on the world, and watch for my place there, and take it!"

There was complete silence for quite a long time. At last—

"You talk as if you were a boy," said Gwen. "What can girls do?"

"Everybody can do what they must do," quietly replied Millie. "I've got
to earn my living, and so have you, I suppose."

"Earn our living! Mother would have a fit!" cried Maddie.

"But Uncle Edmund said in his letter that he was poor," said Millie,
puzzled. "What should you do if he died?"

"Get married, if we could," laughed Theo. "Willie and Georgie say

we're such frights, we never shall. But we think Gwen is good-looking, and
you see she's got a lover already; and she says when she's married she'll see
after all of us—take us out of this hateful old Dale, and go to live at
Brighton or London or some place where we could make friends. Nobody
will make friends here, because mother's such an old stick-in-the-mud—"

The filial sentiment died away, for there was the sound of a soft thud.

"The weight, girls! Mother!" whispered Bee; and in a moment, with a

dexterity born of long practice, the whole flock of lounging girls had arisen,
slipped into place, and were busily stitching when Mrs. Cooper, with her
smile, her long neck, and her earrings, peeped archly round the door.

"Making friends?" said she, beaming.

"Yes, Mrs. Cooper," said Tommy, looking up.

The governess was feeling decidedly uncomfortable. She had repeatedly

warned her pupils, during the preceding days, to hold aloof at first from the
new-comer, until they had decided whether she could be taken into
confidence. But Millie's love-letter, and still more, her calm refusal to show
it, had sent the barriers down with a rush, and the girls had not been able to
think of prudence with such a keen new interest in their blank lives.
Tommy's heart was full of apprehension. She was afraid of this girl who
wanted to learn. She knew that she had nothing to teach her.

Melicent had not moved a muscle when the general rush was made. She
sat still in the window-seat, upright and solitary.

"Dear Melicent must join our happy little sewing circle," said Mrs.
Cooper, beaming round. "No idle hands at the Vicarage, as you see,
darling."

"I cannot use my arm very well yet," said Melicent.

"Oh, we give you one evening's grace," responded the lady playfully.
"Have you been taught to work?"

"No."

"Oh, how sad! Why, Miss Lathom, we have a task before us! Can you
not use a needle at all?"

"Oh, yes. I can make and mend my clothes, and so on. But I had to
teach myself."

There was a silence. "You don't mean that you made the suit you have
on?"

"Yes."

"Oh," said Mrs. Cooper. The wind was taken out of her sails. "Why, you
are quite a genius! We shall have to take lessons. But now, I came to ask
you to come with me, and I will show you your room, and we will have a
little talk."

Millie rose obediently, and followed her aunt from the room; as they
went, the masks dropped, the girls lifted their heads and looked at each
other with intense interest.
 "She's going to make her show the letter."

CHAPTER XII

THE JARRING ELEMENT

"She was one of that numerous class of females, whose society can raise no other
emotion than surprise at there being any men in the world who could like them well
enough to marry them."—JANE AUSTEN.

The first idea suggested by Mrs. Cooper to the mind of the beholder was
almost inevitably the above. How could any man ever have liked her well
enough to marry her?

Mr. Chetwynd-Cooper was among those unfortunates who are sent into
the world without a sense of humour. He thus fell a victim to the same error
of judgment which poor well-meaning King George the Third had
committed before him: that of mistaking a dull, pretentious prig for a really
good woman. Perhaps no queen in history, of whatever moral character,
ever made a greater fiasco as the bringer-up of a large family than did
Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. But in this respect Mrs. Cooper vied
with her, and for the same reason. Each was so secure in her own belief in
herself as possessed of all the domestic virtues, that to her the possibility of
making a mistake never presented itself.

Such women are beyond the reach of argument. Mrs. Cooper had
decided, quite early in life—on what grounds is not known—that to be such
a woman as she was, ought to be the goal of all female endeavour. Hence,
nothing could shake the complacency of her own content. She never tired of
the pose of the perfect wife and mother, the parochial guardian angel; and
this, although her nursery had been the epitome of untidiness and
mismanagement, and her husband was obliged to keep her accounts, and in
other ways to step into the breach continually to supply her glaring
deficiencies. Neither was she discomposed by the fact that all her own
children had found her out at an early age. If her husband ever broke
through his habitual reserve, and remonstrated with her, she met him with
the patient smile of the saint who is misunderstood.

Very soon after marriage he had found out the iron hand beneath her
velvet glove. He had discovered that his own influence was nil, that
argument could not move her, that opposition merely stiffened her smiling
obstinacy. He had sunk into that life which is the most terrible form of
solitude: complete isolation from those nearest to him. The worst of it was
that, though he had no effect upon his wife, she had a gradual and insidious
effect upon him. Continual contact with a dwarfed intelligence was causing
inevitable deterioration, of which he was not aware.

Had the dalesmen known his daily martyrdom, he might have gained
them; but his pride and his loyalty pushed him back behind barred doors.
And what nobody yet had ever divined, this new niece of his knew before
she had been twenty-four hours under his roof.

It made him hate her. The first time her grave, tranquil eyes rested upon
her aunt, he felt that she understood and despised her. Then that same
limpid gaze—direct, keen, pure—travelled to him, the man who was the
life-companion of such a woman. He could feel her thought probing him,
wondering at him, pitying him. He had not at first thought her like his sister,
the dead Melicent to whom he had been sincerely attached. But when he
encountered that wonderful glance, he saw the likeness so strongly that he
afterwards never forgot it—was never able to look at the younger Melicent
without thinking of her more beautiful, radiant mother, who had followed
the man she loved into the wilderness.

But the very likeness embittered him. He had always nursed a grudge
against his wilful sister—a half-contemptuous grudge, as against one who
had stepped outside the pale of conventions held so sacred by his own wife.
Was her young daughter to come from the wilds to sit in judgment upon this
exemplary pair, who found the straitest paths of domestic dulness wide
enough for them to walk in? He almost wished that Melicent would do
something that should justify him in his dislike of her.

He was brooding over it alone in his study, where he wrote with much
care his cold, dry, unreal sermons, when his wife's head appeared round the
door, with her usual coy smile.

"Quite unsuccessful, my darling boy," she said. "She defies me openly;

and yet I flatter myself I was most diplomatic."

Like many essentially cold-hearted people, Mrs. Cooper was prodigal of

endearing epithets. Her husband, on principle, never used any.

"A direct command would, I imagine, have met the case better than
diplomacy," he said, in his cold, collected tones. "What did she say? Was
she rude?"

"Well, not exactly. She said it would be a breach of confidence to show

her letter, but that she would see that the young man wrote no more. She
also said that she insists upon her right to correspond with her guardian
without the letters being overlooked. Rather a shocking way to talk to me,
wasn't it? But we must be very forgiving at first, I see that, and make very
big allowances for the poor darling! The guardian himself seems to be quite
young, and unmarried. Why did not poor Arnold appoint you guardian? As
it is, she evidently thinks we have no authority."

He sat, with a mind oddly divided between dislike for the girl who
defied him, and a sneaking satisfaction that Minna had been routed for once
—by his sister's child!

"However," said his wife, secure as ever in her own infallibility, "we
shall manage her all right in the end. The example of our girls will be
invaluable. It is best to put the matter aside for the present, and let her settle
down."

"Will she settle down, do you think?" asked the vicar.

 There was a tolerant, complacent smile. "My darling boy, I have trained
five, and why not a sixth?"

The vicar did not contradict her; he merely asked:

"Did she tell you what her letter contained?"

"She said she had not opened it yet, which I fear must have been a—a—
tarradidle"—Mrs. Cooper went, through certain evolutions of lips and eyes,
intended as a mute apology for her use of a word so shocking—"but she
said she felt sure it was only to say that, if she is not happy here, the writer
had a home waiting for her."

"Preposterous nonsense! She is a child, and the man probably a savage,"

said the vicar, with some bitterness. "Picture Maddie or Gwen receiving a
note of the kind!"

But when Millie did open Bert's letter, the contents were of a wholly
different nature from what she had expected.

It merely contained a brief announcement of the fact that he had enlisted

in that regiment of scouts which later was known to fame as Lacy's Lions.

In the schoolroom, the knowledge that Melicent had stood firm

communicated an electrical excitement to the atmosphere. The idea of
possible revolt opened prospects of which nobody had as yet dared to think.
Unconsciously to themselves, her cousins already regarded her as a strike-
leader—a Moses who should lead them out of the house of bondage.

And yet no creature could have been less anxious for revolt than this
girl. Her one desire was to fall upon knowledge and devour it. She was
ready to become the slave of anyone who would teach her.

But one day in the schoolroom was enough to quench hope from that
quarter. The education bestowed on her by her father had been partial; but
what she knew, she knew thoroughly. Her Latin and arithmetic and Euclid
were all good; her knowledge of geography and English history made
Tommy feel quite faint. Of French and German she was wholly ignorant,
and could not pick out the notes on the piano.

But in all respects she knew enough to know that Tommy knew nothing.
All the morning the governess was experiencing the annoyance which Mr.
Cooper had known, feeling the clear eyes upon her full of judgment.

The leading point in the education of Mr. Cooper's girls was that they
should have no judgment. They were always to be content to accept what
they were told. When they came in contact with actual life, their only
standard would be that such and such a thing was according to, or differed
from, what they were used to.

"I am a great believer in the power of habit," the vicar was wont to say.
Poor soul! Habit had moulded him with a vengeance; he might be excused
for thinking highly of its powers over the human intelligence.

Melicent was a problem to her cousins. They were fascinated by her, as

the weak must always be by the strong; but they resented her aloofness.
And they were simply bewildered by her tastes.

Tommy was—sub rosâ, of course—reading aloud to them a thrilling

serial from the Daily Looking-glass. It was called "Phyllis and the Duke,"
and was a story of the pure love of that gallant nobleman, the Duke of
Mendip, for his sister's governess, the lovely Phyllis de Forester; of the
machinations of his envious cousin, Captain the Honourable Percy
Blagdon; and of how Phyllis turned out to be the unacknowledged daughter
of an Earl, and the true owner of the Honourable Percy's estates. They had
reached a thrilling chapter, in which the trembling young governess went to
interview a clairvoyante, in a mystic kind of house in St. John's Wood, to
ascertain what had become of her chivalrous lover. Tommy was uneasy
when the story took this turn. She did not like the sound of a mysterious
house in St. John's Wood, and began to reflect, with resentment, that
nowadays you could not trust even the feuilleton of a halfpenny journal to
be wholly inoffensive. But the writer was perfectly equal to the occasion,
and knew his public to a nicety—or might we say, to a nastiness? The
clairvoyante turned out to be Phyllis's deeply injured mamma, a young lady
who would on no account have gone without the indispensable marriage
ceremony; and the gentleman who exploited her, and "ran" the mysterious
house, was her own brother, Phyllis's uncle, who long had sought his
beloved niece in vain.

"I can't think why you don't like it," sighed Gwen, whose eyes were
kindled, her cheeks aglow.

"It is so unreal and so silly," said her cousin calmly. "People don't go on
like that. I like a story that makes you forget that it's not true."

"Such as what?" they asked her.

After reflection—"Such as 'Silas Marner,'" she said.

They had never heard of "Silas Marner."

The glorious autumn weather continued, and two or three days after
Millie's arrival they took her for a long walk, out of the Dale, along Radlem
Rigg, to look at the curious old prehistoric relic locally known as Tod's
Trush.

The loveliness of her surroundings was again borne in upon Millie. The
same up-soaring of spirit which she had experienced when her uncle drove
her from the station once more exhilarated her. She could not analyse what
it was that she found so different here from the land of her birth. She came
from a country of clear air and vast spaces, of solitude and immeasurable
distance. These dales were small in comparison with the endless rippling
veldt she knew. But here there confronted her an element which she was
quick to feel, though as yet too young to define—the element of mystery.

Strange it is that a few atmospheric effects should have power to lift the
soul into new realms, into the brooding heart of a tender, tinted secret,
which haunts the uplands and the valleys of Cleveshire, making a promised
land of every peak that emerges, suggestive, from its golden, shimmering
veil. The primal truth which underlay the power of the Veiled Isis was here;
but in the North the magic is stronger, because to its mystery it adds the
crowning note of austerity.
 There is a loneliness which is the result, not of distance, but of
inaccessibility. The dwellers in two valleys, perhaps five miles apart,
divided by a high mountain, a dangerous pass, are separated far more
thoroughly than those who dwell with fifty miles of plain between them,
which the train will traverse in an hour. These dales give the impression of
something remote, inviolable—something stern and shy, yet with a heart of
glowing colour, of infinite tenderness, for those who can understand.

The Trush itself, when they reached it, was an old barrow, or tumulus,
the earth covering of which had been entirely removed centuries ago. It was
a square kist of stones, the top of which had fallen in. The coffin, or coffins,
which it must once have contained, had vanished so long ago that a
persistent local tradition maintained that there had never been any; but that
the little house had been the abode of a being of supernatural origin, called
Tod, concerning whom antiquarians cudgelled their brains in vain. Two
upright slabs still stood like the jambs of a tiny doorway, with a lintel
across; the whole surrounded by a circular wreath of large stones, which
probably defined the original size of the mound.

To Melicent, who had never seen anything of the kind before, the vacant
and lonely sepulchre was fraught with great pathos. Her thoughts took
wing, and wandered to the times when human hands had erected this
monument, and wondered whether it then stood in such unbroken solitude
as it did now.

They had brought cakes with them, and a bottle of milk, and they all sat
down among the heather and harebells, and refreshed themselves, while
Tommy read a fresh instalment of "Phyllis and the Duke."

CHAPTER XIII
 LANCE BURMESTER IS CONSCIOUS OF A
PERSONALITY
"Our acts our angels are, or good or ill,
Our fatal shadows that walk by us still."
—FLETCHER.

Nothing compelled Melicent to listen, so she sat on Tod's Trush, just

over his pathetic little doorway, her arms round her knees, her eyes fixed,
full of the forward-reaching, time-devouring dreams of youth, upon the
lovely lines of the land, ridge beyond ridge, dying into grape-bloom haze
upon the faint horizon.

She was not unhappy. Her isolation hardly distressed her; she was
accustomed to being an alien among unsympathetic people. She was,
however, considering what she should do. She actively disliked her aunt,
was repelled by her uncle, mentally herded her cousins and their governess
together as so many silly triflers, not particularly honest. But all this she
could bear, if only she might learn to fit herself for her future; and this, it
appeared, was impossible.

If only it had not been so! For here she felt that she could live and work.
Soul and body were being laved in pure air—renewed and vivified. The
terrible sense of antagonism to all her surroundings which she had always
felt in Africa was gone. There she had been craving, craving all the time for
she knew not what; her cry had been that of Paracelsus—"I go to find my
soul!" It seemed to her that she had found it, or would find it, in the stern
keeping of this rugged land, where the only thing that was out of harmony
was the attitude of her own kindred.

Just opposite to her, among the broken ground which rose from the
main valley, forming a ridge parallel to that on which she sat, was a little
house, embowered in fruit trees.
 An ampylopsis creeper on the grey stone wall gave a touch of vivid
scarlet; a great purple Jackmanii clematis smothered the porch.

"There," thought Melicent, "I could wish to be. There I could live and
learn things, and the days would never seem too long."

She studied the little remote place, trying to see whether any road led to
it, and admiring the way in which it stood, as if lifting its face to the kisses
of the southern and western sun.

Lost in reverie, she had not heard the approach of anyone, and was
surprised when a dog jumped through the heather near her, on the side of
the Trush farthest from where her cousins were seated. A whirring of strong
brown wings arose from their covert, and a grouse family shot up, with
indignant "Cock-cocks," wheeling in the blue air. Three guns cracked, and
in a moment the five Vicarage girls were on their feet.

As three sportsmen appeared, Gwen made one bound to where Millie

sat, her face aflame.

"It's Freshfield," she gasped in her ear, "and young Mr. Burmester, and
somebody I don't know. Oh, I wish he was alone! He won't dare to speak to
us. Look at his nice curly dark hair! Isn't he scrumptious?"

The young agent, with an expression of acute discomfort, had raised his
hat to the phalanx of great girls. Mr. Burmester was looking bewildered at
the sudden appearance of what looked like a boarding-school out for a walk
emerging from the heather. He also pulled off his cap, and said, in the
deprecating tones of a very young man:

"Oh, I say! I'm afraid we startled you." With which he made as though
to pass on.

Millie had not moved from her seat on the Trush; it was not her way to
be startled. She had taken off her hat, and sat there bare-headed in the
sunset, her heart full of quiet, like Wordsworth's nun—too steeped in
Nature's calm to notice this intrusion.
 The third member of the shooting party had paused to examine the lock
of his gun. He was a short, rather thick-set man, with very blue, clear eyes,
which redeemed his face from the common-place—which saw beauty in all
Nature, and seemed to exact truth from men. When he raised these eyes
from the gun, he saw Millie seated there on the Trush, and he gave a glad
laugh, not at all surprised, but full of satisfaction.

"Hallo, Melicent! There you are!" he cried out heartily.

Melicent bounded up, looked around, pushed away Gwen, who stood
before her, and leaping into the heather, flew to her friend. She gave a little
cry of gladness.

"Mr. Helston! How did you get here? Is Mrs. Helston here too?"

"She's not actually here in sight, but she's not far off," he replied,
putting his arm round her. "You'll see her very soon. You must present me
to your cousins. Lance, I've found a friend."

Lancelot Burmester, in secret terror of what he called "flappers," came

up awkwardly. He was a clever-looking fellow, fair, with an incisive profile,
a pale face and pince-nez. He advanced from one side, as Tommy, anxious
and heated, hurried up on the other.

"Miss Lutwyche and I are old friends," said Mr. Helston pleasantly. "We
made the voyage from Africa together. Have I the pleasure of speaking to
Mrs. Cooper?"

Tommy, blushing, disclaimed the honour, explained her identity, and

shook hands with young Burmester. Freshfield, meanwhile, slipped round
to Gwen behind the backs of the party.

"I know something of Mayne, Miss Lutwyche's guardian," said Mr.

Helston in explanation; "and at his request my wife and I undertook the
serious task of keeping this young person in order for the voyage." He did
not add that he had himself paid the difference between first and second-
class fare for her. "After her being so cruelly mishandled," he said, "you
may imagine she needed care. She was not really fit to travel, but she was
so eager to be off." He smiled down at her. "I think she looks a little
different," he concluded quite fondly, "from what she did when we first
took her in hand."

"But you have not said yet how you got here?" urged Millie, who was
holding, in both hers, the hand that hung over her shoulder.

"Why, the very day you left us I ran up against Burmester in Pall Mall,
and he said, 'Come down for a week's shooting,' and when we realised that
Ilberston is, as it were, next door to Fransdale, you may imagine that we
were doubly minded to come. Well, here we are! And how do you like
England?"

"If by England you mean Fransdale," said Millie, "I like it in a way that
can't be put in words."

"Oh, yes, it can be put in words; the thing's been done. You should read
the works of one William Wordsworth," struck in Lance Burmester.

Millie raised her eyes to his face> and apparently liked what she found
there.

"Should I? I will," she said thoughtfully.

"What have you done to your arm?" asked the young man kindly.

"My dear chap," said Harry Helston, "what this scrap of a child has been
through would have broken the spirit of anybody else. Her brute of a Boer
stepmother—"

Millie turned to him quickly.

"Please, Mr. Helston, my uncle does not wish it known," she said, with
sedate dignity.

"What? Oh, very well, pussie!" replied her friend, gazing round at the
eager faces of the governess and the girls; "I'll say no more, then. Mustn't
get you into trouble. What are you up to with my gun? Want to shoot a bird
—eh?"
 "Oh, do let me," she begged; "I've not had a chance for so long! My arm
is well enough for me to be able to take a sight. Do let me try!"

"Come this way. Freshfield says there are any amount of birds just over
this ridge," said Burmester eagerly. "I should like to see you shoot."

Melicent possessed herself of the gun, and went forward, laughing and
sparkling. The others followed as if spellbound. Nobody had an eye for
Freshfield and Gwen, who came slowly behind, making the most of their
moment. Very soon, up went the whir of brown wings again. Millie
stopped, took aim with what seemed to be great deliberation; there was a
breathless pause; a bird fell; everyone was laughing and congratulating the
sportswoman. Lance Burmester presented her with her prize, and added
another to make a brace. She was urged to come on, and repeat her exploit,
but Tommy was growing nervous, and interfered.

"The vicar might not like it—they must be getting home."

Melicent went, quite happily, having received the assurance that her
friends were at hand, and would look her up before long. She was
unprepared for the torrent of reproaches and abuse which streamed forth
upon her head as soon as they were out of sight of the shooting party.

"You mean little cat!" "You're a regular sneak!" "We know now, it's you
yourself that want to keep it dark!" "Why couldn't you hold your tongue!"
"Father said you were not to mention it, he never said a word about other
people."

Their meaning began to dawn upon her at last.

"You mean my not allowing Mr. Helston to tell how I broke my arm?
Well, of all the people I ever met, you have the most low-down notions of
honour!" she cried indignantly. "You are just like my half-brothers and
sisters! I always thought English people were straight, that it was only
Boers that were such skunks!"

Tommy interfered, and reproved Millie for using bad language; and a
more congenial topic was soon found, in the delights of having met and
spoken to, not only Freshfield, but Mr. Burmester himself.

"Maddie wants him for her young man," explained Theo; "only we
didn't see how the thing was to be begun, because, you see, we never get
any chance to speak to him. Father and mother did go to dine with Sir
Joseph once, but mother doesn't like Lady Burmester. She is dreadfully
High Church, she thinks everybody ought to go to the Communion service
every Sunday, and we only have it once a month, so on the other Sundays
Lady Burmester drives all the way to Ilberston. Mother thinks it so
impertinent of Lady Burmester to think she can possibly know better than a
clergyman's wife. She said she wouldn't go there again; but I don't think
they've been asked. You know really, mother doesn't know anything at all
about it. I asked her why it was wrong to have that service every week,
because we are supposed to believe in the Catholic Church, and all other
Catholics seem to; so she said it was most improper for a young girl to
argue about such things, as her father was sure to know best I said: 'If he
knows, won't he explain to me?' and she said: 'You must wait till you are a
great deal older.'"

"To-morrow is the first Sunday in the month," chimed in Maddie, "so

they will all be there. What did you think of Lancelot Burmester's looks?
Do tell us all about the Helstons. You were lucky to make friends with
them, I daresay they will ask you to stay. Mother doesn't like us to go and
stay away, for fear of our hearing naughty words. She doesn't think anybody
is so well brought up as we are! If she could only hear some of the stories
Willie and Georgie bring home from school!"

They all laughed at this.

"The real reason is, we have no clothes to go in, and she can't afford to
buy us any," grumbled Theo, who was perhaps the handsomest of the girls,
and the cleverest too.

"I daresay you could make your own if you tried," said Melicent. "I'd
help. I think you ought to make your own clothes."

In the interest suddenly created by this new idea, nobody noticed that
during the whole of the walk home Gwen, the talkative, never said a word.
 * * * * * * * *

"George, what an epidemic of girls!" groaned Lance, as soon as Tommy

and her brood were out of sight. "Those poor Coopers! As if their own
great, ugly five were not enough, but they must take on another to make the
half-dozen!"

"It is an act of true kindness," replied Helston. "For a man with five
daughters of his own to make room for another, shows him to be extremely
conscientious."

"The little cousin," critically said Lance, "has something fetching about
her. Nothing to look at, but one is conscious of a personality."

"I never look at her," said Millie's friend, "but those lines occur to my
mind—

"The good stars met in your horoscope

Made you of spirit, fire and dew."

"I don't know about the dew; she's a skinny little wisp," was the uncivil
comment.

"Wait till she grows up," said Millie's champion. "You would wonder
there was anything left of her if you knew what she has come through. But I
gave her my word, so I mustn't tell you; and after all," he added, musing, "I
don't wonder that the vicar doesn't want the tale to get about; it's not a pretty
story, and I daresay would do the child no good in a narrow-minded,
provincial circle."

"I can't think how she will get on with those Coopers," remarked
Burmester. "Did you ever see such raw material? And you heard what my
mater said at lunch? They are such hide-bound, pragmatical—no doing
anything with them. The vicar quietly goes his way, listening to nobody's
wishes—thinks himself infallible. The pater has given him up as a bad job;
says you might as well have a cabbage at the Vicarage! Hall, of Ilberston, is
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