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 Katrien Verbert
Mike Sharples
Tomaž Klobucar (Eds.)
LNCS 9891

Adaptive and
Adaptable Learning
11th European Conference
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Adaptive and
Adaptable Learning
11th European Conference
on Technology Enhanced Learning, EC-TEL 2016
Lyon, France, September 13–16, 2016
Proceedings

123
Editors
Katrien Verbert Tomaž Klobučar
KU Leuven Jožef Stefan Institute
Leuven Ljubljana
Belgium Slovenia
Mike Sharples
The Open University
Milton Keynes
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 Preface

The 11th edition of the European Conference on Technology-Enhanced Learning

(EC-TEL) was held in Lyon (France) during September 13–16, 2016. This volume
collects all peer-reviewed contributions that were included in the exciting program of
this year’s conference.
In the 11th year of its existence, EC-TEL has become the major interdisciplinary
venue for the community of technology-enhanced learning (TEL) researchers in
Europe and worldwide. Furthermore, EC-TEL is a shared opportunity for researchers,
practitioners, educational developers, and policy makers to address current challenges
and advances in the field. Since 2006, EC-TEL has provided a reference point for
relevant state-of-the art research in TEL; first in Crete (Greece, also in 2007), and then
in Maastricht (The Netherlands, 2008), Nice (France, 2009), Barcelona (Spain, 2010),
Palermo (Italy, 2011), Saarbrücken (Germany, 2012), Paphos (Cyprus, 2013), Graz
(Austria, 2014), and Toledo (Spain, 2015).
In these uncertain and turbulent times, it is essential for individuals and organiza-
tions continually to adapt and change. The theme of EC-TEL 2016 was “Adaptive and
Adaptable Learning.” It highlighted developments in learning systems that adapt to the
needs, interests, and abilities of each learner, toward a vision of learning that is per-
sonalized yet social. Effective technology enhanced learning must also be adaptable –
resilient, flexible, and sustainable to meet rapidly changing needs, technologies,
contexts, and policies. The conference explored how research in collaborative and
personalized learning could be combined with new developments in analytics, inter-
action design, social, mobile and ubiquitous technologies, and visualization techniques,
to enhance learning for everyone.
Drawing on the core TEL disciplines of computer science, education, psychology,
cognitive science, and social science, research contributions presented at EC-TEL 2016
addressed topics such as adaptive and adaptable learning, collaborative knowledge
building, motivation and engagement, collaborative learning, game-based learning,
lifelong learning, intelligent learning systems, recommender systems, learning design,
learning analytics, assessment for learning, social computing and social media, massive
open online courses (MOOCs), and wearable and pervasive technologies.
This 2016 edition was again extremely competitive, given the high number of
submissions generated. A total of 148 valid paper submissions were received. Of these,
102 were full papers. All submissions were assigned to at least three members of the
Program Committee (PC) for review. One of the reviewers had the role of leading
reviewer and initiated a discussion in the case of conflicting reviews. All reviews as
well as the discussions were checked and discussed within the team of PC chairs, and
additional reviews or meta-reviews were elicited if necessary. From this process, 26
submissions were selected as full papers (resulting in an acceptance rate for full papers
of 25 %). Additionally, 23 papers were chosen as short papers, eight as demonstrations,
and 33 as posters. Table 1 shows the detailed statistics.
VI Preface

Table 1. Acceptance rate in different submission categories

Published as
Submitted as Full Paper Short Paper Poster Paper Demo Paper
Full Paper 102 26 16 21 2
Short Paper 31 7 8
Poster Paper 9 4
Demo Paper 6 6
Sum 148 26 23 33 8

The dedicated work of all the PC members as well as the additional reviewers must
be acknowledged. Only with their help was it possible to deal with the high number of
submissions and still meet all deadlines as originally planned.
Keynote presentations completed this competitive scientific program. Pierre
Dillenbourg from the EPFL Center for Digital Education, Switzerland, gave a pre-
sentation on “How Does TEL Research Inform the Design of Educational Robots?”
and Vincent Aleven from Carnegie Mellon University presented on “Adaptivity in
Learning Technologies: Kinds, Effectiveness, and Authoring.” A keynote from the
European Commission covered policy aspects of technology enhanced learning.
A plenary panel session was held on the theme of the conference – Adaptive and
Adaptable Learning. Two invited panelists from the artificial intelligence and education
community, Benedict du Boulay and Rose Luckin, joined the researchers from the TEL
community.
Demonstrations and posters had a pronounced role in the conference program.
A plenary session was organized as a “TEL demo shootout” in which the demon-
strations were presented to arouse the audience’s curiosity and highlight the unique
aspects. Later on, the demonstrations were shown in action, giving participants the
opportunity for hands-on experience, sparking discussions between researchers, prac-
titioners, and educational developers, providing a basis to vote for the best demo.
A plenary session was dedicated to an exhibition of posters, to foster discussion about
work in progress and research issues. Representatives from the industry also presented
and discussed their contributions to the field in the industry track.
The TEL community proposed and organized a set of stimulating workshops as part
of the conference. In all, nine workshops were selected from the proposals and were
organized. Some of them continue a series of well-established workshops on motiva-
tional and affective aspects in TEL and on awareness and reflection in TEL. Others, like
Pedagogical Grounded Learning Analytics Design, were new for 2016. A doctoral
consortium was organized concurrently with the workshops, which provided an
opportunity for PhD students to discuss their work with experienced TEL researchers.
We would like to thank the many contributors for creating a stimulating conference
of high quality. These include foremost the authors, the PC members and reviewers,
and the conference chairs, who all contributed to the program. We would also like to
thank an enthusiastic and dedicated local organization team who made EC-TEL
 Preface VII

a smooth and memorable experience. The conference was partially supported by the
European Association of Technology-Enhanced Learning (EATEL), Springer, and
EasyChair.

September 2016 Mike Sharples

Katrien Verbert
Tomaž Klobučar
 Organization

Executive Committee
General Chair
Tomaž Klobučar Jožef Stefan Institute, Slovenia

Program Chairs
Mike Sharples The Open University, UK
Katrien Verbert KU Leuven, Belgium

Steering Committee Representative

Ralf Klamma RWTH Aachen University, Germany

Demo and Poster Chairs

Marco Kalz Open University, The Netherlands
Viktoria Pammer-Schindler TU Graz and Know-Center, Austria

Workshop Chair
Christian Glahn University of Applied Sciences HTW Chur,
Switzerland

Industry Chairs
Franck Tarpin Bernard SBT Group, France
Pierre Dubuc OpenClassrooms, France

Doctoral Consortium Chairs

Ulrike Lucke Universität Potsdam, Germany
Katherine Maillet Institut Mines-Télécom, Télécom Ecole de
Management, France

Dissemination Chairs
Christine Michel INSA de Lyon, France
Karim Sehaba Université Lumière Lyon 2, France

Local Organization Chair

Élise Lavoué Université Jean Moulin Lyon 3, France
X Organization

Program Committee

Marie-Helene Abel Muriel Garreta Domingo

Mohammad Al-Smadi Dragan Gasevic
Carlos Alario-Hoyos Sebastien George
Liaqat Ali Denis Gillet
Luis Anido Rifon Fabrizio Giorgini
Inmaculada Arnedillo-Sánchez Carlo Giovannella
Juan I. Asensio-Pérez Christian Glahn
Antonio Balderas Sabine Graf
Merja Bauters Monique Grandbastien
Jason Bernard Andrina Granić
Yolaine Bourda David Griffiths
Manuel Caeiro Rodríguez Begona Gros
Sven Charleer Franka Grünewald
Mohamed Amine Chatti Joerg Haake
Michel Christine Andreas Harrer
Miguel Ángel Conde Ángel Hernández-García
John Cook Davinia Hernández-Leo
Audrey Cooke Sharon Hsiao
Ulrike Cress Seiji Isotani
Alexandra Cristea Isa Jahnke
Mihai Dascalu Marco Kalz
Paul De Bra Nikos Karacapilidis
Carlos Delgado Kloos Michael Kickmeier-Rust
Stavros Demetriadis Andrea Kienle
Christian Depover Barbara Kieslinger
Michael Derntl Ralf Klamma
Philippe Dessus Styliani Kleanthous
Darina Dicheva Joris Klerkx
Stefan Dietze Tomaž Klobučar
Yannis Dimitriadis Johannes Konert
Vania Dimitrova Vitomir Kovanovic
Juan Manuel Dodero Milos Kravcik
Peter Dolog Mart Laanpere
Hendrik Drachsler Lydia Lau
Benedict Du Boulay Élise Lavoué
Martin Ebner Effie Lai-Chong Law
Iria Estévez-Ayres Derick Leony
Baltasar Fernandez-Manjon Elisabeth Lex
Carmen Fernández-Panadero Tobias Ley
Christine Ferraris Andreas Lingnau
Angela Fessl Martin Llamas-Nistal
Beatriz Florian-Gaviria Ulrike Lucke
Serge Garlatti Rose Luckin
 Organization XI

Vanda Luengo Adolfo Ruiz Calleja

George Magoulas Demetrios Sampson
Katherine Maillet Olga C. Santos
Nils Malzahn Andreas Schmidt
Jean-Charles Marty Ulrik Schroeder
M. Antonia Martínez-Carreras Karim Sehaba
Manolis Mavrikis Stylianos Sergis
Martin Memmel Mike Sharples
Agathe Merceron Bernd Simon
Riichiro Mizoguchi Peter Sloep
Yishay Mor Sergey Sosnovsky
Pedro J. Muñoz Merino Marcus Specht
Rob Nadolski John Stamper
Carmen L. Padrón-Nápoles Slavi Stoyanov
Viktoria Pammer-Schindler Kairit Tammets
Pantelis Papadopoulos Stefano Tardini
Abelardo Pardo Pierre Tchounikine
Kai Pata Stefaan Ternier
Mar Perez-Sanagustin Vladimir Tomberg
Zinayida Petrushyna Christoph Trattner
Niels Pinkwart Stefan Trausan-Matu
Kaska Porayska-Pomsta Katrien Verbert
Michael Prilla Jo Wake
Christoph Rensing Fridolin Wild
Bart Rienties Raphael Zender

Additional Reviewers

Vasiliki Aidinopoulou Christopher Krauss

Muhammad Anwar Amna Liaqat
Cecilia Avila Garzon Daniyal Liaqat
Oliver Blunk Tobias Moebert
Mutlu Cukurova Jelena Nakic
Jort de Vreeze Manuel Palomo-Duarte
Nour El Mawas Patricia Santos
Danny Flemming Hendrik Thüs
Christoph Greven Ina von der Beck
Julio Guerra Matthias Weise
Wayne Holmes
 Contents

Full Papers

A Semantic-Driven Model for Ranking Digital Learning Objects Based

on Diversity in the User Comments. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Entisar Abolkasim, Lydia Lau, and Vania Dimitrova

Social Facilitation Due to Online Inter-classrooms Tournaments . . . . . . . . . . 16

Roberto Araya, Carlos Aguirre, Manuel Bahamondez, Patricio Calfucura,
and Paulina Jaure

How to Attract Students’ Visual Attention . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

Roberto Araya, Danyal Farsani, and Josefina Hernández

Creating Effective Learning Analytics Dashboards: Lessons Learnt . . . . . . . . 42

Sven Charleer, Joris Klerkx, Erik Duval, Tinne De Laet,
and Katrien Verbert

Retrieval Practice and Study Planning in MOOCs: Exploring

Classroom-Based Self-regulated Learning Strategies at Scale . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
Dan Davis, Guanliang Chen, Tim van der Zee, Claudia Hauff,
and Geert-Jan Houben

“Keep Your Eyes on ’em all!”: A Mobile Eye-Tracking Analysis

of Teachers’ Sensitivity to Students . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
Philippe Dessus, Olivier Cosnefroy, and Vanda Luengo

Flipped Classroom Model: Effects on Performance, Attitudes

and Perceptions in High School Algebra . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
Peter Esperanza, Khristin Fabian, and Criselda Toto

Argumentation Identification for Academic Support

in Undergraduate Writings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
Jesús Miguel García Gorrostieta and Aurelio López-López

Mobile Grading Paper-Based Programming Exams: Automatic Semantic

Partial Credit Assignment Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
I-Han Hsiao

Which Algorithms Suit Which Learning Environments? A Comparative

Study of Recommender Systems in TEL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
Simone Kopeinik, Dominik Kowald, and Elisabeth Lex
XIV Contents

Discouraging Gaming the System Through Interventions of an Animated

Pedagogical Agent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
Thiago Marquez Nunes, Ig Ibert Bittencourt, Seiji Isotani,
and Patricia A. Jaques

Multi-device Territoriality to Support Collaborative Activities:

Implementation and Findings from the E-Learning Domain . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
Jean-Charles Marty, Audrey Serna, Thibault Carron, Philippe Pernelle,
and David Wayntal

Refinement of a Q-matrix with an Ensemble Technique Based

on Multi-label Classification Algorithms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
Sein Minn, Michel C. Desmarais, and ShunKai Fu

When Teaching Practices Meet Tablets’ Affordances. Insights

on the Materiality of Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
Jalal Nouri and Teresa Cerratto Pargman

A Peer Evaluation Tool of Learning Designs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193

Kyparisia A. Papanikolaou, Εvagellia Gouli, Katerina Makrh,
Ioannis Sofos, and Maria Tzelepi

Learning in the Context of ManuSkills: Attracting Youth to Manufacturing

Through TEL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
Stefano Perini, Maria Margoudi, Manuel Oliveira, and Marco Taisch

Does Taking a MOOC as a Complement for Remedial Courses Have

an Effect on My Learning Outcomes? A Pilot Study on Calculus . . . . . . . . . 221
Mar Pérez-Sanagustín, Josefina Hernández-Correa, Claudio Gelmi,
Isabel Hilliger, and María Fernanda Rodriguez

Are You Ready to Collaborate? An Adaptive Measurement of Students’

Arguing Skills Before Expecting Them to Learn Together . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234
Chrysi Rapanta

Examining the Effects of Social Media in Co-located Classrooms:

A Case Study Based on SpeakUp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247
María Jesús Rodríguez-Triana, Adrian Holzer, Luis P. Prieto,
and Denis Gillet

Enhancing Public Speaking Skills - An Evaluation of the Presentation

Trainer in the Wild . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263
Jan Schneider, Dirk Börner, Peter van Rosmalen, and Marcus Specht

How to Quantify Student’s Regularity? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277

Mina Shirvani Boroujeni, Kshitij Sharma, Łukasz Kidziński,
Lorenzo Lucignano, and Pierre Dillenbourg
 Contents XV

Nurturing Communities of Inquiry: A Formative Study

of the DojoIBL Platform . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 292
Ángel Suárez, Stefaan Ternier, Fleur Prinsen, and Marcus Specht

Inferring Student Attention with ASQ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 306

Vasileios Triglianos, Cesare Pautasso, Alessandro Bozzon,
and Claudia Hauff

Chronicle of a Scenario Graph: From Expected to Observed Learning Path . . . 321

Mathieu Vermeulen, Nadine Mandran, and Jean-Marc Labat

Adaptive Testing Using a General Diagnostic Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 331

Jill-Jênn Vie, Fabrice Popineau, Yolaine Bourda, and Éric Bruillard

How Teachers Use Data to Help Students Learn: Contextual Inquiry

for the Design of a Dashboard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 340
Françeska Xhakaj, Vincent Aleven, and Bruce M. McLaren

Short Papers

Assessing Learner-Constructed Conceptual Models and Simulations

of Dynamic Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 357
Bert Bredeweg, Jochem Liem, and Christiana Nicolaou

Learning Analytics Pilot with Coach2 - Searching for Effective Mirroring . . . 363
Natasa Brouwer, Bert Bredeweg, Sander Latour, Alan Berg,
and Gerben van der Huizen

Predicting Academic Performance Based on Students’ Blog

and Microblog Posts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 370
Mihai Dascalu, Elvira Popescu, Alexandru Becheru, Scott Crossley,
and Stefan Trausan-Matu

Take up My Tags: Exploring Benefits of Meaning Making

in a Collaborative Learning Task at the Workplace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 377
Sebastian Dennerlein, Paul Seitlinger, Elisabeth Lex, and Tobias Ley

Consistency Verification of Learner Profiles in Adaptive Serious Games . . . . 384

Aarij Mahmood Hussaan and Karim Sehaba

MoodlePeers: Factors Relevant in Learning Group Formation for Improved

Learning Outcomes, Satisfaction and Commitment in E-Learning
Scenarios Using GroupAL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 390
Johannes Konert, Henrik Bellhäuser, René Röpke, Eduard Gallwas,
and Ahmed Zucik
XVI Contents

Towards a Capitalization of Processes Analyzing Learning

Interaction Traces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 397
Alexis Lebis, Marie Lefevre, Vanda Luengo, and Nathalie Guin

Improving Usage of Learning Designs by Teachers: A Set of Concepts

for Well-Defined Problem Resolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 404
Anne Lejeune, Viviane Guéraud, and Nadine Mandran

Immersion and Persistence: Improving Learners’ Engagement in Authentic

Learning Situations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 410
Guillaume Loup, Audrey Serna, Sébastien Iksal, and Sébastien George

STI-DICO: A Web-Based ITS for Fostering Dictionary Skills

and Knowledge. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 416
Alexandra Luccioni, Jacqueline Bourdeau, Jean Massardi,
and Roger Nkambou

PyramidApp: Scalable Method Enabling Collaboration in the Classroom . . . . 422

Kalpani Manathunga and Davinia Hernández-Leo

From Idea to Reality: Extensive and Executable Modeling Language

for Mobile Learning Games . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 428
Iza Marfisi-Schottman, Pierre-Yves Gicquel, Aous Karoui,
and Sébastien George

Combining Adaptive Learning with Learning Analytics: Precedents

and Directions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 434
Anna Mavroudi, Michail Giannakos, and John Krogstie

An Adaptive E-Learning Strategy to Overcome the Inherent Difficulties

of the Learning Content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 440
Anna Mavroudi, Thanasis Hadzilacos, and Charoula Angeli

Evaluating the Effectiveness of an Affective Tutoring Agent

in Specialized Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 446
Aydée Liza Mondragon, Roger Nkambou, and Pierre Poirier

MOOC Design Workshop: Educational Innovation with Empathy

and Intent. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 453
Yishay Mor, Steven Warburton, Rikke Toft Nørgård,
and Pierre-Antoine Ullmo

OERauthors: Requirements for Collaborative OER Authoring Tools

in Global Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 460
Irawan Nurhas, Jan M. Pawlowski, Marc Jansen, and Julia Stoffregen

Virtual Reality for Training Doctors to Break Bad News . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 466

Magalie Ochs and Philippe Blache
 Contents XVII

User Motivation and Technology Acceptance in Online Learning

Environments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 472
Maxime Pedrotti and Nicolae Nistor

Reflective Learning at the Workplace - The MIRROR Design Toolbox . . . . . 478

Sobah Abbas Petersen, Ilaria Canova-Calori, Birgit R. Krogstie,
and Monica Divitini

Toward a Play Management System for Play-Based Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . 484

Eric Sanchez, Claudine Piau-Toffolon, Lahcen Oubahssi, Audrey Serna,
Iza Marfisi-Schottman, Guillaume Loup, and Sébastien George

The Blockchain and Kudos: A Distributed System for Educational Record,

Reputation and Reward . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 490
Mike Sharples and John Domingue

Game-Based Training for Complex Multi-institutional Exercises

of Joint Forces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 497
Alexander Streicher, Daniel Szentes, and Alexander Gundermann

Demo Papers

DALITE: Asynchronous Peer Instruction for MOOCs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 505

Sameer Bhatnagar, Nathaniel Lasry, Michel Desmarais,
and Elizabeth Charles

Digital and Multisensory Storytelling: Narration with Smell, Taste

and Touch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 509
Raffaele Di Fuccio, Michela Ponticorvo, Fabrizio Ferrara,
and Orazio Miglino

A Platform for Social Microlearning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 513

Bernhard Göschlberger

A Framework to Enhance Adaptivity in Moodle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 517

Ioannis Karagiannis and Maya Satratzemi

Refugees Welcome: Supporting Informal Language Learning

and Integration with a Gamified Mobile Application . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 521
Hong Yin Ngan, Anna Lifanova, Juliane Jarke, and Jan Broer

DEDOS-Player: Educational Activities for Touch Devices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 525

David Roldán-Álvarez, Estefanía Martín, Óscar Martín Martín,
and Pablo A. Haya

The Booth: Bringing Out the Super Hero in You . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 529

Jan Schneider, Dirk Börner, Peter van Rosmalen, and Marcus Specht
XVIII Contents

DojoIBL: Nurturing Communities of Inquiry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 533

Angel Suarez, Stefaan Ternier, Fleur Prinsen, and Marcus Specht

Poster Papers

Towards an Automated Assessment Support for Student Contributions

on Multiple Platforms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 539
Oula Abu-Amsha, Nicolas Szilas, and Daniel K. Schneider

Experiments on Virtual Manipulation in Chemistry Education. . . . . . . . . . . . 543

Shaykhah S. Aldosari and Davide Marocco

A Survey Study to Gather Requirements for Designing a Mobile Service

to Enhance Learning from Cultural Heritage. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 547
Alaa Alkhafaji, Sanaz Fallahkhair, Mihaela Cocea,
and Jonathan Crellin

Inspiring the Instructional Design Process Through Online

Experience Sharing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 551
Grégory Bourguin, Bénédicte Talon, Insaf Kerkeni,
and Arnaud Lewandowski

An Approach to the TEL Teaching of Non-technical Skills

from the Perspective of an Ill-Defined Problem. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 555
Yannick Bourrier, Francis Jambon, Catherine Garbay,
and Vanda Luengo

Towards a Context-Based Approach Assisting Learning Scenarios Reuse . . . . 559

Mariem Chaabouni, Mona Laroussi, Claudine Piau-Toffolon,
Christophe Choquet, and Henda Ben Ghezala

Revealing Behaviour Pattern Differences in Collaborative Problem Solving . . . 563

Mutlu Cukurova, Katerina Avramides, Rose Luckin,
and Manolis Mavrikis

DevOpsUse for Rapid Training of Agile Practices Within Undergraduate

and Startup Communities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 570
Peter de Lange, Petru Nicolaescu, Ralf Klamma, and István Koren

Towards an Authoring Tool to Acquire Knowledge for ITS Teaching

Problem Solving Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 575
Awa Diattara, Nathalie Guin, Vanda Luengo, and Amélie Cordier

Kodr: A Customizable Learning Platform for Computer Science Education. . . . 579

Amr Draz, Slim Abdennadher, and Yomna Abdelrahman
 Contents XIX

A Reflective Quiz in a Professional Qualification Program for Stroke

Nurses: A Field Trial. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 583
Angela Fessl, Gudrun Wesiak, and Viktoria Pammer-Schindler

Helping Teachers to Help Students by Using an Open Learner Model . . . . . . 587

Blandine Ginon, Matthew D. Johnson, Ali Turker,
and Michael Kickmeier-Rust

Personalized Rooms Based Recommendation as a Mean for Increasing

Students’ Activity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 591
Veronika Gondova, Martin Labaj, and Maria Bielikova

Detecting and Supporting the Evolving Knowledge Interests

of Lifelong Professionals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 595
Oluwabukola Mayowa Ishola and Gordon McCalla

Boosting Vocational Education and Training in Small Enterprises . . . . . . . . . 600

Miloš Kravčík, Kateryna Neulinger, and Ralf Klamma

Supporting Teaching Teams in Personalizing MOOCs Course Paths . . . . . . . 605

Marie Lefevre, Nathalie Guin, Jean-Charles Marty, and Florian Clerc

Increasing Pupils’ Motivation on Elementary School with Help of Social

Networks and Mobile Technologies. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 610
Václav Maněna, Roman Dostál, Štěpán Hubálovský,
and Marie Hubálovská

Understanding Collective Behavior of Learning Design Communities . . . . . . 614

Konstantinos Michos and Davinia Hernández-Leo

A Value Model for MOOCs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 618

Yishay Mor, Marco Kalz, and Jonatan Castano-Munoz

Framework for Learner Assessment in Learning Games . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 622

Mathieu Muratet, Amel Yessad, and Thibault Carron

A Bayesian Network for the Cognitive Diagnosis of Deductive Reasoning . . . 627

Ange Tato, Roger Nkambou, Janie Brisson, Clauvice Kenfack,
Serge Robert, and Pamela Kissok

Finding the Needle in a Haystack: Who are the Most Central Authors
Within a Domain?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 632
Ionut Cristian Paraschiv, Mihai Dascalu, Danielle S. McNamara,
and Stefan Trausan-Matu

Bio-inspired Computational Algorithms in Educational and Serious Games:

Some Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 636
Michela Ponticorvo, Andrea Di Ferdinando, Davide Marocco,
and Orazio Miglino
XX Contents

Learning Experiences Using Tablets with Children and People with Autism
Spectrum Disorder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 640
David Roldán-Álvarez, Ana Márquez-Fernández, Estefanía Martín,
and Cristian Guzmán

Introducing the U.S. Cyberlearning Community . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 644

Jeremy Roschelle, Shuchi Grover, and Marianne Bakia

Future Research Directions for Innovating Pedagogy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 648

Jeremy Roschelle, Louise Yarnall, Mike Sharples,
and Patrick McAndrew

Platform Oriented Semantic Description of Pattern-Based

Learning Scenarios . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 652
Zeyneb Tadjine, Lahcen Oubahssi, Claudine Piau-Toffolon,
and Sébastien Iksal

Model of Articulation Between Elements of a Pedagogical Assistance . . . . . . 656

Le Vinh Thai, Stéphanie Jean-Daubias, Marie Lefevre,
and Blandine Ginon

Simulation-Based CALL Teacher Training . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 660

Ilaria Torre, Simone Torsani, and Marco Mercurio

Adaptable Learning and Learning Analytics: A Case Study

in a Programming Course. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 665
Hallvard Trætteberg, Anna Mavroudi, Michail Giannakos,
and John Krogstie

Recommending Physics Exercises in Moodle Based on Hierarchical

Competence Profiles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 669
Beat Tödtli, Monika Laner, Jouri Semenov, and Beatrice Paoli

Learning Analytics for a Puzzle Game to Discover the Puzzle-Solving

Tactics of Players . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 673
Mehrnoosh Vahdat, Maira B. Carvalho, Mathias Funk,
Matthias Rauterberg, Jun Hu, and Davide Anguita

Recommending Dimension Weights and Scale Values in Multi-rubric

Evaluations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 678
Mikel Villamañe, Ainhoa Álvarez, Mikel Larrañaga,
and Begoña Ferrero

Author Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 683

Full Papers
 A Semantic-Driven Model for Ranking Digital
Learning Objects Based on Diversity
in the User Comments

Entisar Abolkasim(&), Lydia Lau, and Vania Dimitrova

University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK

{sc10ena,L.M.S.Lau,V.G.Dimitrova}@Leeds.ac.uk

Abstract. This paper presents a computational model for measuring diversity

in terms of variety, balance and disparity. This model is informed by the Stir-
ling’s framework for understanding diversity from social science and under-
pinned by semantic techniques from computer science. A case study in learning
is used to illustrate the application of the model. It is driven by the desire to
broaden learners’ perspectives in an increasingly diverse and inclusive society.
For example, interpreting body language in a job interview may be influenced
by the different background of observers. With the explosion of digital objects
on social platforms, selecting the appropriate ones for learning can be chal-
lenging and time consuming. The case study uses over 2000 annotated com-
ments from 51 YouTube videos on job interviews. Diversity indicators are
produced based on the comments for each video, which in turn facilitate the
ranking of the videos according to the degree of diversity in the comments for
the selected domain.

Keywords: Diversity model for learning
Semantics
User comments

analytics
Video rating

1 Introduction

Videos are considered one of the main resources for learning. For instance, YouTube
was ranked the second most popular social resource that has been used for informal
learning by students [1]. One of the challenges that faces the learners and tutors is the
tremendous amount of videos available in social environments (e.g. 300 h of video are
uploaded to YouTube every minute1). Finding the right videos can be time consuming,
especially if the learner is seeking knowledge in ill-defined domains such as culture or
body language.
Social interactions around videos (e.g. user’s textual comments, likes, dislikes, etc.)
offer a rich source of information about the video itself, the users, and the subject
domain. These interactions can provide access to diverse perspectives on the subject
domain and users can learn from each other vicariously.
In “The Wisdom of Crowds”, Surowiecki argues that one of the elements to have a
wise crowd is to have a diverse crowd [2]. A diverse crowd could provide different
1
http://www.statisticbrain.com/youtube-statistics/.

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016

K. Verbert et al. (Eds.): EC-TEL 2016, LNCS 9891, pp. 3–15, 2016.
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-45153-4_1
4 E. Abolkasim et al.

perspectives or expertise by users from different backgrounds. This research aims to

analyse the social cloud (e.g. YouTube videos with associated user comments, user
profiles and other metadata) for the identification and ranking of suitable videos.
Combining social computing and semantic techniques, this paper attempts to answer
the following research questions:
Q1 What metrics can be used to measure diversity in user comments?
Q2 How to rank videos based on diversity in user comments?

The rest of the paper is structured as follows: Sect. 2 positions this research in
related techniques used to analyse user comments and introduces a diversity framework
that informed the development of the model for this paper. Section 3 introduces the
proposed semantic-driven diversity model and the steps to operationalise the model.
Implementation of the model as the Semantic-Driven Diversity Analytic Tool (SeD-
DAT) is presented in Sect. 4. Section 5 shows the results from the application of
SeDDAT in a study with YouTube videos. Section 6 concludes and presents future
directions.

2 Related Work

Techniques for Classification and Ranking of Videos. Data mining techniques have
been used to exploit the richness of user interactions around videos, especially user
comments, for various purposes. For example, a mechanism for filtering comments was
proposed by Serbanoiu & Rebedea to identify relevant comments on YouTube videos
using classifications and ranking approaches [3]. Similarly, using classification tech-
niques a study by Siersdorfer et al. shows that community feedback on already rated
comments can help to filter and predict ratings for possibly useful and unrated com-
ments [4]. Using the state-of-the-art in learning to rank approaches, the user interac-
tions or “social features” were shown to be a promising approach for improving the
video retrieval performance in the work introduced by [5]. For improving video cat-
egorisation, a text-based approach was conducted to assign relevant categories to
videos, where the users’ comments among all the other features gave significant results
for predicting video categorisation [6]. Underpinned by data mining techniques,
Ammari et al. used user comments on YouTube videos to derive group profiles to
facilitate the design of learning simulated environments [7]. Galli et al. conducted a
study that used different data mining techniques to analyse user comments to introduce
a re-ranking method which produced a new ordered list of videos that is originally
provided by the YouTube recommender [8].
Semantics Techniques for Diversity Modelling. Semantics offers a great potential
for diversity modelling by providing an explicit structure to position the model within
the domain of interest. A new research stream in exploration of diversity of individual’s
views in social media platform has emerged. A formal framework has been developed
for extracting individual viewpoints from semantic tags associated with user comments
[9]. Research has shown that linked data can be a useful source for enriching user
modelling interactions when bringing new user dimensions, such as cultural variations
 A Semantic-Driven Model for Ranking Digital Learning Objects 5

[10]. New work has also emerged on the interpretation and analysis of social web data
with a strong focus on cultural differences - for example, a comparison between Twitter
and Sina Weibo [11]. Likewise, recent work has also shown how data analytics can
benefit the workforce engagement in enterprise contexts [12].
Framework for Understanding Diversity. An extensive study by Andy Stirling on
measures for diversity shows how diversity has gained interest in different disciplines
such as ecology, economics and policy [13]. His study shows that diversity has been
measured based on three different dimensions, using Stilring’s terminology, variety,
balance and disparity. These dimensions have been used in three different ways to
indicate the level of diversity: one concept diversity (e.g. variety only as in ecology); or
dual concept diversity by combining two dimensions (e.g. variety and balance as used
in economics), or triple concept diversity as a combination of variety, balance and
disparity (e.g. as an aggregated value of the three dimensions as proposed by Stirling).
The Stirling framework has been used in different domains, such as cultural diversity
for policy and regulation [14], cultural diversity in the cinema, television and book
industries [15–17], and spread of subjects in interdisciplinary research [18]).

Informed by the Stirling diversity framework, this research uses the semantic
annotations of user comments on videos to facilitate video ranking according to
diversity.

3 A Semantic-Driven Diversity Model

The diversity dimensions, variety, balance and disparity are defined as follow
[19, p. 709]:
– Variety is “the number of categories into which system elements are apportioned”.
– Balance is “a function of the pattern of apportionment of elements across
categories”.
– Disparity is “the manner and degree in which the elements may be distinguished”.
Underpinned by semantic techniques, these dimensions will be used separately and
in combination as indicators to measure diversity in user comments against an ontology
representing a domain of interest, which will be labelled as domain diversity.

3.1 Preliminaries

Basic Components. The main input of the proposed model for measuring diversity is
a set of textual comments T ¼ ft1 ; t2 ; . . .; tn g which have been created by users U ¼
fu1 ; u2 ; . . .; um g while interacting with a set of digital objects D ¼ fd1 ; d2 ; . . .; dk g.
Social Cloud Components. Every digital object d has a set of users U ðdÞ ¼
fu1 ; u2 ; . . .; umd g who commented on d; where every user ui 2 U ðdÞ has written at
least one comment on d.
6 E. Abolkasim et al.

Every comment t 2 T is associated with a user ut 2 U and a digital object dt 2 D

where ut has made t while interacting with dt in a social space. The textual comments
created by a user u 2 U are denoted with T ðuÞ ¼ ft1 ; t2 ; . . .; tnu g; it is assumed that
TðuÞ 6¼ ;. Similarly, the textual comments associated with a digital object d 2 D are
denoted with T ðd Þ ¼ ft1 ; t2 ; . . .; tnd g
It is assumed that some data are available to characterise the digital objects and the
users. A digital object d 2 D can have some metadata that represents key features, e.g.
title, author, media type (e.g. video, text, and image), and date. These metadata are
presented as a vector metadataðd Þ ¼ hf1 ; f2 ; . . .; fnd i. Similarly, it is assumed that for
every user u 2 U some profile data is collected, e.g. user age, gender, nationality,
expertise. This is captured in a user profile vector userProfileðuÞ ¼ hp1 ; p2 ; . . .; pnu i.
Semantic Underpinning. As the starting point for the semantic-driven analytics
pipeline, the textual comments would be semantically annotated using an ontology X
representing the domain of interest. The set of annotated comments will be used for the
diversity analysis.
Domain Ontology. The ontology X is structured as X ¼ \EX ; HX [ , where:EX is a
set of ontology entities EX ¼ CX [ IX , where CX is a set of classes that represent the
domain categories, IX is a set of instances representing the individuals which belonging
to the classes, and CX \ IX ¼ ;.
HX is a set of hierarchical
relationships
 between entities H ¼ fsubClassOf;
instanceOfg, where subClassOf ei ; ej ; ei ; ej 2 CX ; ei 6¼ ej defines that ei is a subclass


of ej ; and instanceOf ei ; ej ; ei 2 IX ; ej 2 CX defines that ei is an instance of class ej .
Semantic Annotation. Every comment t 2 T is tagged with a set of entities
Et ¼ fe1 ; e2 ; . . .; ent g, where Et EX . The set of ontology
S entities associated with all
comments in T ¼ ft1 ; t2 ; . . .; tn g is denoted as E ¼ i¼1::n Eti .

3.2 Metrics for Domain Diversity

Measuring diversity requires the identification of the system elements and categories of
the system elements [19]. For this paper, the system elements are E - the entities used in
annotating the user comments. The categories in which system elements can be
apportioned are CX - domain ontology classes. Therefore, the diversity dimensions -
variety, balance and disparity of domain diversity of the digital objects, are defined as
follows:
Variety v. The number of ontology super classes (i.e. domain categories) into which
the entities from annotation (i.e. system elements) are apportioned.

Ec ¼ f8e cjc 2 CX ^ Ec E
 A Semantic-Driven Model for Ranking Digital Learning Objects 7

K ¼ f8cjjEc j [ 0g

v ¼ jK j ð1Þ

Balance b. The proportions pi of entities from annotation across the ontology super
classes that are identified for variety K. Shannon Entropy index is used for this
research. An alternative, Shannon Evenness, is not used as it will give infinity results
when variety is equal to one.
Xv
b¼ i¼1
pi ln pi ; where ð2Þ

jEc j
pi ¼
jcj

Disparity d. The manner and degree in which the entities from annotations may be
distinguished. This investigates how scattered/dispersed the entities from annotations
are within their super classes, which could be referred to as disparity within categories.
An internal validation index Ball-Hall [20], based on clustering, is adapted to measure
the dispersion dis(c) within each super class where a semantic distance measure
(shortest path [21]) is used to calculate the distances between entities for each super
class.

1 Xv
d¼ disðci Þ; where; ð3Þ
v i¼1

 2
1 XjEc j
disðcÞ ¼ minðpathp ðej ; mc ÞÞ ;
jEc j j¼1 8p

and mc is the medoid2 of category c.

4 An Overview of SeDDAT- Semantic-Driven Diversity

Analytics Tool

Implementation: The semantically-driven model is operationalised using Java, Jena

APIs and SPARQL queries resulting in the semantic-driven diversity analytics tool,
SeDDAT. It is depicted on the right hand side of Fig. 1.
Input: SeDDAT takes as an input the annotated user comments, ontology that rep-
resents the domain of interest and used for annotating the comments, user profile and

2
A medoid is the most centrally located item in a cluster that has minimal average distances to all the
other items in the cluster [22].
8 E. Abolkasim et al.

Fig. 1. The process of producing ranked digital objects according to diversity in user comments.

digital object metadata. To calculate domain diversity, SeDDAT retrieves the entities
from an xml file and then uses the extracted entities for further calculations.
Output: Given the domain ontology, the algorithms of this tool calculate a vector of
the three diversity dimensions (variety, balance and disparity) for each digital object.
Figure 1 shows how SeDDAT is used for measuring the diversity in user comments.
The process goes through three layers: the social interactions layer, where the social
cloud (user comments, user profile, and digital object metadata) is collected; the
semantic layer, where a selected domain ontology is used to annotate the user com-
ments; and the diversity analytics layer, where SeDDAT extracts the entities used in the
annotations of the user comments, calculates the diversity of these entities that are
mapped against the domain ontology, and ranks the digital objects according to the
selected metrics.

5 A Case Study- Application of SeDDAT on Video Ranking

In order to test the proposed diversity model, SeDDAT was used on a set of videos
about job interviews. Apart from the verbal communications, body language is one of
the aspects that may influence the outcome of the interaction between the interviewer
and interviewee. In an increasingly inclusive and diverse society, it is important to
understand the different possible interpretations of the body language signals to avoid
misunderstanding. This study aimed to test the usefulness of the diversity metrics in the
selection of videos that contain the most diverse range of comments relating to body
 A Semantic-Driven Model for Ranking Digital Learning Objects 9

language in job interview. There is an assumption that the higher the diversity, the
higher the potential of a video for broadening and deepening the learners’ awareness.

5.1 Input Dataset

The input dataset was an xml file, obtained from a previous study by Despotakis [23]. It
contains (a) videos metadata: video ID, URIs of the YouTube videos on job interviews
with associated title, category, author, duration, (b) user profiles: nickname, age,
gender, location, and occupation, and (c) annotated comments: comments with asso-
ciated ontology entities and their URIs. A body language ontology was used to
semantically annotate the comments (an automated process).
The assumption for SeDDAT is that the ontology and the semantic annotations of
the comments are sound. Only a subset of the data was used for this study:
– 51 videos were randomly selected from over 200 videos.
– 2949 associated comments were extracted.
– 1223 unique entities from annotations were extracted.

5.2 The Domain Ontology

Body language3 ontology, which was used to semantically annotate the comments and
assist the process of calculating the diversity dimensions, has eight domain categories
(top super classes): body motion; body position; body language; body language signal
meaning; body sense function; object; kinesics; and nonverbal communication (see
Fig. 2).

Fig. 2. A protégé snapshot of the domain categories (top super classes) of the selected domain
ontology.

5.3 Results
The extracted entities from annotations were passed through the three algorithms
designed to calculate the diversity dimensions as shown in Fig. 1. The results (data
associated with each video as well as diversity dimensions) were saved in a spreadsheet

3
http://imash.leeds.ac.uk/ontology/amon/BodyLanguage.owl
10 E. Abolkasim et al.

Table 1. Sample results of seven YouTube videos sorted by video IDs (smallest to largest).
Video ID #Comments #Entities Variety Balance Disparity
103 25 6 2 0.32 39.4
190 5 2 1 0.01 60.5
209 74 48 4 0.68 20.08
363 4 16 3 0.39 25.28
402 425 105 6 1.14 10.65
403 293 68 4 0.85 14.83
788 45 35 5 0.75 15.95

for further analysis. Table 1 shows the diversity dimensions of a sample of seven
YouTube videos with some of the associated data: video ID and number of comments
and entities from annotations.

5.4 Analyses and Discussion

A combination of quantitative and qualitative analysis of the results was conducted to
acquire a deeper understanding on the nature of diversity highlighted. Inspired by
Rafols et al. [18], this study used more than one indicator for diversity in user com-
ments. Each diversity dimension was used separately to rank the videos and then in
combination. Answers to the following questions were sought:
Q1 What does it mean to be ranked top or bottom based on variety?
Q2 What does it mean to be ranked top or bottom based on balance?
Q3 What does it mean to be ranked top or bottom based on disparity?
Q4 What if the three diversity dimensions are used in combination for ranking?

(1) Ranking Based on Variety. Videos with high variety indicate that the comments
have covered most or all of the high level aspects of the domain (i.e. the entities from
annotations are apportioned to different domain categories). Therefore, to identify
videos that covered a variety of domain aspects, the video ordering can be based on the
highest to smallest values for variety. As can be seen in Table 2, comments on the top
video 402 covered six domain categories (body sense function; body position; object;
body language; body motion; and body language signal meaning) compared to the
bottom ranking video 190 that had comments covering only one domain category
(body language signal meaning).
(2) Ranking Based on Balance. Videos with a high value in balance mean that
comments covered evenly the aspects of the domain (i.e. the entities from annotations
are well proportioned across domain categories). See Table 3 for the list of videos
sorted based on balance. The video 402 was ranked top, because the proportions pi of
its entities are higher compared to the other videos. Table 4 shows the proportions, as
defined in formula 2 in Sect. 3.2, of the two top videos 402 and 403. For example,
body language signal meaning has a total of 1336 entities (classes and instances), and
the proportions of videos 402 and 403 are 52 and 40 respectively.
 A Semantic-Driven Model for Ranking Digital Learning Objects 11

Table 2. The sample videos ordered top to bottom according to variety.

Video ID #Comments #Entities Variety Balance Disparity
402 425 105 6 1.14 10.65
788 45 35 5 0.75 15.95
209 74 48 4 0.68 20.08
403 293 68 4 0.85 14.83
363 4 16 3 0.39 25.28
103 25 6 2 0.32 39.4
190 5 2 1 0.01 60.5

Table 3. The sample videos ordered top to bottom according to balance.

Video ID #Comments #Entities Variety Balance Disparity
402 425 105 6 1.14 10.65
403 293 68 4 0.85 14.83
788 45 35 5 0.75 15.95
209 74 48 4 0.68 20.08
363 4 16 3 0.39 25.28
103 25 6 2 0.32 39.4
190 5 2 1 0.01 60.5

Table 4. The proportions of videos 402 and 403 across the eight domain categories.
Video Body Body Body Body Object Nonverbal Kinesics Body
ID language position motion language (256) communication (1) senses
signal (33) (118) (429) (1) function
meaning (6)
(1336)
402 52 1 13 4 32 0 0 4
403 40 0 9 0 17 0 0 2

(3) Ranking Based on Disparity. Videos with high disparity indicate that the com-
ments cover distinctive aspects within the domain categories (i.e. the entities from
annotating the comments are widely scattered within their domain categories).
Therefore, to identify videos that triggered distinct domain aspects around their content,
the videos can be order largest to smallest according to their disparity value as can be
seen in Table 5.
Ranking based on disparity shifted the top videos (e.g. videos 402 and 403) that
were ranked based on variety or balance to the bottom. Similarly, the video 190 that
was ranked bottom for variety and balance came top here.
To investigate this further, the ranked videos were inspected closely using the
(a) video content, (b) number of comments, (c) number of entities from annotations,
and (d) samples of user comments. Also, a correlation between the number of user
comments and the diversity dimensions was conducted.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 CHAPTER XXXI.
THE SUMMONS.

In the moonlight, bright as day, Mr. Jervis rode home beside Miss
Gordon’s rickshaw. Her tell-tale fan stuck out of the pocket of his
overcoat.
Yes, their little world was not blind; it was evidently a settled thing.
Most people were glad. The Brandes were sure to do the wedding in
“style;” and a wedding would be an agreeable variety from dances
and picnics.
“I shall come up to-morrow morning,” he said, as he reluctantly
released her hand, “to-morrow before twelve.”
Mr. Brande, who had effected his escape early, had returned
home, and been in bed and asleep for some hours.
He was suddenly aroused by his wife standing at his bedside, her
cloak hanging off her shoulders, her coiffeur a little deranged, a lamp
in her hand illuminating an unusually excited countenance.
“Well, what is it?” he demanded with pardonable irritation.
“Oh, P.! what do you think? A man has come from Simla——”
“Yes,” suddenly sitting erect, his official mind at once on the alert
for some pressing and important dispatch.
“He came out with them in the same ship,” she panted.
Had Sarabella his wife gone suddenly out of her mind?
“He says that Mark, not Waring, is the rich man.”
“He said it after supper, I suppose,” snarled Mr. Brande. “He was
drunk!”
 “Not a bit of it! I tackled Mark himself, and he confessed. I was
very angry at being taken in. He declares they did it without meaning
a bit of harm at first, and that when it went too far he did not know
what to do. He is very sorry.”
“That he is a millionaire! Oh yes, I should think so!”
“He is coming up first thing to-morrow to tell you all about it; and,
unless I’m mistaken, to speak to you about Honor.”
“What about her?” sharply.
“Why, you dear, stupid man, are you asleep still? Can’t you
guess?”
“You told me that there was nothing of that sort; in fact,” with an
angry laugh, “that ‘the boy,’ as you called him, was desperately
devoted to you.”
“What stuff!” she ejaculated indignantly. “He will have thirty
thousand a year! I know that I shall never close an eye to-night!”
“And are good-naturedly resolved that I am to keep you in
countenance. You might, I think, have reserved this double-barrelled
forty-pounder for the morning.”
“And that’s all the thanks I get,” she grumbled, as she slowly
trailed away to her dressing-room.
Just about this very time, Mark Jervis was smoking a cigarette in
his bare sitting-room. Before him, on the table, lay a white feather
fan and a programme. He was much too happy to go to bed, he
wanted to sit up and think. His thoughts were the usual bright ones
incident to love’s young dream, and as he watched the smoke slowly
curling up the air was full of castles. These beautiful buildings were
somewhat rudely shattered by the entrance of his bearer—wrapped
in a resai, and looking extremely sleepy—with a letter in his hand.
“A Pahari brought this for the sahib three hours ago,” tendering a
remarkably soiled, maltreated envelope.
Of course it was from his father at last. He tore it open, and this
was what it said—
 “My dear Son,
“I am very ill. If you would see me alive, come. The
messenger will guide you. I live forty miles out. Lose no time.
“Your affectionate father,
“H. Jervis.”
The letter was forty-eight hours old.
“Is the messenger here?” he asked eagerly.
“Yes, sahib.”
“Then call up the grey pony syce; tell him to take gram and a jule,
and saddle the pony. I am going off into the interior. I must start in
twenty minutes.”
The bearer blinked incredulously.
“I need not take you.” The bearer’s face expanded into a grin of
intense relief. “I shall be away several days. Get out my riding kit,
shove some clothes in a bag, and ask the cook to put up some bread
and meat and things, and tell the coolie I will be ready very shortly.”
Then he sat down, drew his writing-case towards him, and began
to write a note to Honor. Her first love letter—and strange, but true,
his also. It was merely a few lines to say he had been most suddenly
called away by his father, and hoped that he would be back within
the week.
It was both a keen disappointment and a keen pleasure to the girl
when the ayah brought the letter to her at nine o’clock. She read it
over and over again, but she will not allow our profane eyes to see it,
nor can it be stolen, for she carries it about with her by day, and it
rests under her pillow by night: at the end of the week it was getting
a little frayed.
When the ayah handed the note to the Miss Sahib, the writer was
already twenty miles out of Shirani, following a broad-shouldered
Gurwali with his head and shoulders wrapped in the invariable brown
blanket.
 Their course was by mountain bridle-paths, and in an eastern
direction; the scenery was exquisite, but its beauties were entirely
lost upon Jervis, who was picturing other scenes in his mind’s eye.
The road crept along the sheer faces of bare precipices, or plunged
suddenly into woody gorges, or ran along a flat valley, with cultivated
fields and loosely built stone walls. The further they went, the lovelier
grew the country, the wilder the surroundings. At twelve o’clock they
halted to rest the grey pony—the messenger’s muscular brown legs
seemed capable of keeping up their long swinging trot all day. It was
four o’clock in the afternoon when they arrived at their journey’s end;
they abruptly descended into a flat wooded dale, surrounded by hills
on three sides, sloping away to the plains on the fourth. A path from
the bridle-road led them into a dense jungle of high grass, full of
cattle, pack ponies, and mules. Emerging from this, they came to a
wall, along which they kept for about three hundred yards, and
turning a sharp corner they found themselves outside a great square
yellow house, two stories high.
It seemed as if it had been bodily transplanted from England.
There was nothing irregular or picturesque about it—the windows
were in rows, the roof was square and had a parapet, the sole
innovation was a long verandah, which ran all round the building,
and was apparently of recent date, a mere after-thought.
Mark, as he rode up to the steps, looked about him for the coolie;
he had suddenly disappeared. There was no one to be seen. He
ascended to the verandah, it was deserted, save for some fowl, who
seemed delightfully at home. It was more the verandah of a native
dwelling than the entrance to the home of an Englishman.
The new-comer gazed around expectantly, and saw three string
charpoys, a bundle of dirty bedding, a pair of shoes, a huka, and a
turban.
The door, which was innocent of paint or bells, was ajar. He
pushed it open and found himself in a large, dim, very dirty hall. Here
he was confronted by an old nanny goat, and two kids; to the left he
saw a room, which appeared to be a mere repetition of the
verandah.
 As he hesitated and looked about, a man suddenly appeared, a
servant presumably, wearing a huge red turban, and a comfortable
blue cloth coat. He was stout and well to do, had a fat face, a black
square beard, and remarkably thick lips.
He seemed considerably disconcerted, when he caught sight of
the stranger, but drawing himself up pronounced the words,
“Durwaza, Bund,” with overwhelming dignity. Adding in English—
“The sahib never see no one.”
“He will see me,” said Mark, with decision.
“Sahib sick, sar, seeing no one, those my orders. Sahib seeing no
sahibs for many years.”
“Well, he sent for me, and I have come. Let me see him
immediately. I am his son.”
The Mahomedan’s expression instantly changed from lofty
condescension to the most unqualified astonishment.
“The sahib’s—son!” he repeated incredulously.
“Yes. I have told you that once already. Look sharp, and send
some one to see after my pony; I have come a long distance.”
The bearer went away and remained absent about five minutes,
during which time Mark had leisure to note the dirt, and neglected,
almost ruinous, state of the house—which had originally been a fine
mansion—to listen to loud jabbering and whispering in the room
beside him, and to observe several pairs of native eyes eagerly
peeping through a crack in the door.
“Come with me,” said the bearer, with a sullen air. “The sahib will
see you presently.”
“Is he better?”
“Yes, he is quite well; please to sit here,” and he opened the door
of an immense dining-room, furnished with Bombay carved black
wood furniture, and a dusty Indian carpet. It was a room that was
evidently never used, and but rarely opened. Its three great long
windows, which were caked and dim with grime, looked out upon the
snows. This was evidently the back of the house; the front
commanded a view of the plains. The site had been admirably
selected.
A black tray, with cold meat and some very sour bad bread, was
borne in, and a place cleared on the dusty table by the joint efforts of
the sulky bearer and a khitmaghar, with a cast in his eye, and the
very leanest figure Mark had ever beheld. However, he was much
too hungry to be fastidious, and devoured the refreshments with a
capital appetite. Meanwhile, after their custom, the two men stood by
in silence with folded arms, staring with concentrated attention and
unremitting gaze until the conclusion of the meal.
It was quite dark when the bearer reappeared, and, throwing open
the door, announced in a deeply resentful tone—
“The sahib will see the sahib.”
Mark followed the fat, square, aggressive-looking back, till he
came to a curtained archway, and was ushered into a lofty dim room,
so dim, that he could barely discern the figure which rose to greet
him—a tall bent man in a dressing-gown.
“Mark, my boy, it was like you to come so soon,” said a shaky
voice. “Like what you were as a child,” and he held out both his
hands eagerly.
“I only got your letter at four o’clock this morning, sir,” said his son.
“I hope you are better?”
“I am for the present. I sent for you by a private messenger post-
haste, because I believed that I had but a few hours to live, and I
longed desperately to see you.”
“I have been hoping you would send for me for the last two
months. I have been waiting, as you know, in Shirani.”
“Yes—yes—yes! Sometimes the temptation was almost
irresistible, but I fought against it; for why should I cloud over your
young life? However, I had no choice; the situation has been forced
upon me—and you. My faithful companion, Osman, died ten days
ago, but we will talk of this another time. These voices in my head
interrupt me; especially that woman’s voice,” with an irritable
gesture.
His son could not, for the life of him, think of any immediate or
appropriate remark, and sat in embarrassed silence, and then Major
Jervis continued—
“You are six and twenty now—a grown man, Mark, and speak like
a man! I have not had a good look at your face yet. I wonder if it is
the same face as that of my own honest-eyed boy?”
The answer would be prompt, if he so pleased, for the lean
khitmaghar now staggered in under the weight of a large evil-
smelling “argand” lamp (a pattern extinct everywhere save in remote
parts of India).
Mark looked over eagerly at his father. His head was bent in his
hands. Presently he raised it, and gazed at his son with a look of
unmistakable apprehension. His son felt as if he were confronting an
utter stranger; he would never have recognized this grey-haired
cadaverous old man as the handsome stalwart sabreur he had
parted with sixteen years previously. He looked seventy years of
age. His features were sharpened as if by constant pain, his colour
was ashen, his hands emaciated, his eyes sunken; he wore a
camel’s-hair dressing-gown, and a pair of shabby slippers.
“You are just what I expected,” he exclaimed, after a long pause.
“You have your mother’s eyes; but you are a Jervis. Of course you
see a great change in me?”
“Well, yes—rather,” acquiesced his son, with reluctant truthfulness.
“India ages people.”
“You think this a strange life that I lead, I am sure; miles away from
my fellow-countrymen, buried alive, and long forgotten?”
“No, not forgotten, sir. Do you recollect Pelham Brande of the Civil
Service? He was asking for you only the other day.”
“I think I remember him—a clever fellow, with a very pretty wife,
who people said had been a servant. (How long these sort of things
stick to people’s memories.) I’ve been out of the world for years.”
 “But you will return to it. Come back to England with me. What is
there to keep you in this country?”
“What, indeed!” with a jarring laugh. “No, my dear boy, I shall
never leave the Pela Bungalow, as they call it, until I am carried out
of it feet foremost.”
“Why do you say this? You are a comparatively young man—not
more than fifty-five.”
“I feel a thousand years old; and I often wish that I was dead.”
“I don’t wonder! I should say the same, if I had lived here alone for
seven years. How do you kill time?”
“I don’t kill time. Time is killing me. I walk in the garden sometimes,
but generally I sit and think. You must be tired, my boy,” as if struck
by a sudden thought.
“Well, I am, I must confess. I was at a ball until four o’clock this
morning.”
“A ball till four o’clock this morning!” he repeated. “How strange it
sounds. It seems the echo of a voice speaking twenty years ago!”

Dinner was served at a small table; a fowl for Mark, some patent
food for Major Jervis. The cooking was atrocious, the attendance
careless, the appointments splendid, but grimy. It was the same in
every department—an extraordinary mixture of squalor and
magnificence. It seemed to the indignant young man that these
ruffians of servants thought anything good enough for his father.
When Major Jervis’s huka was brought in he looked over at his
son and said—
“You smoke, of course?”
“Yes, thanks; but not that sort of thing. I would not know how to
work it.”
 Last time he had lit a cigarette between four walls he little guessed
at the style of his next surroundings. The room was not
uncomfortable, the furniture was massively carved and luxurious, the
carpet rich Persian; there were book-cases full of volumes, and there
were fine pictures on the walls; but the paper was peeling off in
strips, and cobwebs hung like ropes from the corners. The books
were grimy with mould, the carpets and curtains inches deep in dust;
certainly a sort of oasis had been cleared around Major Jervis’s
chair, but everywhere the eye turned were tokens of neglect, poverty,
and decay. His father’s slippers were in holes, his linen frayed;
apparently he was a poor man. What had become of the begum’s
fortune?
 CHAPTER XXXII.
“THE PELA KOTHI,” OR “YELLOW HOUSE.”

When Mark Jervis awoke the next morning, in a totally unfamiliar

room, he wondered if he was dreaming, as he gazed at the heavy
old carved furniture, the faded window hangings, the curious
devotional pictures, and the little black crucifix and holy water
receptacle at the foot of the bed. (The Cardozo family had of course
been Catholics.) No, he was not dreaming, but actually under his
father’s roof at last.
As soon as he had dressed, he went out before breakfast to see
after the welfare of his syce and pony. The yard resembled that of a
serai, it was so full of natives, who gazed at him inquiringly, as he
made his way through sheep, goats, buffalo calves, and children, to
the stables, the tumble-down remains of what had once been an
imposing pile. An old hairy Bhoetia pony and his own were now the
sole occupants. His syce came to him eagerly, with a face of pitiful
dismay.
“No gram for pony, sahib”—holding up his hands dramatically.
“Never giving gram here—nothing.”
“I’ll see about that—go and buy some”—handing him rupees.
“Oh, sahib”—now putting his hands into an attitude of prayer.
“Plenty, plenty Budmashes in this place. Sahib, let us travel to-day,
quickly to Shirani.”
“In a few days, Dum Sing—not yet; meanwhile take care of
yourself and the pony.” And he walked on to the garden.
The gardens, though somewhat neglected, were in perfect order in
comparison to the house; they were laid out in stony terraces, the
walls of which were loaded with fruit; there were flowers and
vegetables in abundance, a round fish-pond, several statues,
summer-houses, and a large staff of mallees working away with
surprising zeal. A broad terrace walk commanded, as you arrived at
one end, the snows, and a grand panorama of the plains as you
reached the other. A well-worn track was beaten in the middle of this
path, which indicated that it was a favourite promenade, and at the
end nearest to the plains there was a seat.
Here Mark was joined by his father. He was dressed in a shrunken
Puttoo suit, and looked frail and feeble, but such a gentleman in
spite of all his shabbiness!
“This is my walk and my seat,” he explained. “I sit here for hours.
That white line far below is the cart road, and with a good glass you
can make out carts and tongas; and far away on the plains, twice a
day in clear weather, you can see the smoke of the train. So I get
some glimpses of the world after all.”
“And how are you off for neighbours, sir?”
“My nearest is an American missionary and doctor; he is twelve
miles from here; and there is a German mission fifteen miles across
that hill”—pointing with a stick.
“And your post? What about your letters?”
“Oh, I don’t want a post; once in six months or so I send a coolie
down to Ramghur.”
“Then you don’t take a daily paper?”
“Oh no; why should I? There are stacks of old ones about the
house,” was the amazing reply.
“And books?”
“I’m a man of one book. I read the Indian Army List; that is quite
enough literature for me. Some fellow’s names alone call up a whole
novel.”
“You feel better to-day, I hope?”
“Yes, I am unusually well. You are not married, are you?” he asked
abruptly.
 “No, not yet”—rather startled at the sudden change of topic. “But I
hope to marry before long.”
“Hope, hope; that’s what we all say. Don’t let it go beyond that.
Hope told a flattering tale. I don’t believe in hope.”
“Why not?” inquired his companion rather anxiously.
“You see this terrace,” he exclaimed, as if he had not heard; “I
walk up and down it exactly a hundred times a day; I take a hundred
beans in my pocket, and put one of them on that bench every time I
come to it. I find it most interesting; only sometimes birds steal my
beans, and that puts me out, and I lose count, and I have to begin
the whole hundred over again, and I get so tired. But I must do it, or
they would be angry.”
“Who would be angry, sir?”
“I forget, just this minute—the beans or the birds.”
“You seem to have wonderfully fine fruit-trees here,” said Mark,
after an expressively long silence.
“Yes, the mallees work well, the rascals, because I give them all
the vegetables and flowers and fruit, as well as their wages. They
make a good thing out of it; the peaches and pears and plums from
the Yellow House are celebrated.”
Mark now remembered having heard of their fame in far Shirani.
“Let us sit down here and talk,” continued Major Jervis. “For once I
will forego my walk; it is not every day that I have my son to listen to
me. Recent events seem blurred and dim, but I remember years
back distinctly. Mark, my boy, shall I tell you something about myself,
and how I have spent my life? Would you care to know?”
“I would, of course.”
“Then listen to me. You know I am the younger son of a good old
family—Jervis of Jervis. My father, your grandfather, was General
Vincent Jervis, and—I can’t tell him that” (aside to himself). “My
family bequeathed me a handsome profile, an aristocratic type of
face, and something else (but I can’t tell him that). I married for love,
and I can recommend the experiment. Your mother and I scrambled
along most happily, though I had always extravagant tastes—
inherited, like my nose and yours. When she died, I lost my better
half indeed—my headpiece, my best adviser, my all. I drifted back
into my old squandering bachelor ways, and into debt; but I paid for
you to the hour. Then I came across Miss Cardozo. She was not
very young, but handsome, pleasant, and rich—she fell in love with
me. I was a good-looking, dashing, devil-may-care major in a crack
native cavalry regiment. She belonged to this country by race and
taste. There was a good deal of the begum about her; she hated the
idea of a stepson, and I reluctantly allowed your uncle to adopt you. I
knew you would be rich and well cared for; but even then, I struggled
against your uncle’s persuasions. I must have had a presentiment of
these days, when I would be desolate and alone. I was happy
enough with Mércèdes; we led a gay, roving, extravagant life. We
had plenty of friends, plenty of spirits, plenty of money. Mércèdes
had no relations, but one, thank God; a greasy-looking cousin in
Calcutta. Lord forgive me, but I hate him! My wife had a kind, warm
heart, but she was passionate, excitable—and jealous. She allowed
her feelings too much liberty; she slapped another woman’s face at a
public ball, she slippered her servants, she ran up huge bills, and
she could never speak the truth. She actually preferred to tell a lie,
even when she had nothing to gain by it. Can you imagine such a
thing? However, we have all our faults; and she was a good soul,
though she was not like your mother. They say a man prefers his first
wife, a woman her second husband—what is your opinion, eh,
Mark?”
“I am not in a position to offer one,” he answered, with a smile.
“Oh, I forgot—of course not. Well, eight years ago this very month
we were coming away from Mussouri to our place in the Doon; we
were in the mail tonga, our ponies were half broken; though we had
a good driver—the best on the road—it was all he could do to hold
them, as they rattled down with the heavy steel bar, going clank,
clank, clank. Just one mile out a goat on the cliff dropped suddenly
into the road, the brutes shied wildly across, the strong wooden
railings caught the side of the tonga, they strained—I hear them now
—snapped, crashed, then there was a moment’s mad struggle of
driver and ponies—too late, over we went! They show the place still,
I dare say—a drop of two hundred feet. The ponies were killed, and
the driver and my wife. How I escaped was a marvel. My leg was
broken, my head cut about, but I survived. Osman, my orderly, who
had been in the old regiment for twenty years, nursed me, at
Mussouri; and, as soon as I could be moved, I came here. I
remembered it as a retired, quiet spot, with a charming garden. I
wanted rest; my head was injured, and I thought I would pull myself
together here, and then go home—but here I am still.”
“Yes, but not for much longer,” added his son, cheerily; “you will
come home with me.”
“Mércèdes’ will was produced,” he proceeded, calmly ignoring the
question; “she had made it when she was not pleased with me,
seemingly. This place and three hundred acres are mine, and one
thousand rupees a month for life; also her jewels and gold
ornaments—as much use to me as a heap of stones. Fernandez
receives a fine income even now. All her wealth accumulates till my
death, and then everything—jewels, rents, shares—goes to him. He
is my heir. I cannot leave you a penny; nothing but the old Yellow
House.”
“I don’t want the Cardozo money, sir.”
“No; and you will have plenty. Meanwhile Fuzzil Houssan spends
my income on his relations to the third and fourth generation, and
laughs and grows fat.”
“Surely you do not leave it all in his hands?” asked his listener
incredulously.
“Yes, most of it. Only for that, I suppose he would poison me. I
believe he is in Fernandez’ pay—Fernandez, who I am keeping out
of thousands a year. Occasionally he comes in person to see if there
is any chance of my dying? I have given him great hopes more than
once. Now that Osman is dead, he and Fuzzil will certainly hurry me
out of the world—and that speedily.”
“Who was Osman?”
 “He was a sowar in my regiment—a Sikh—we had known each
other for half a lifetime, and he was more to me than a brother. We
joined the same month, we left the same day. He gave up home,
country, people, and followed my fortunes, and died in my arms last
week.” Here Major Jervis’s voice became almost inaudible.
“We had braved heat and snow, fire and water, together, and in the
long evenings here whilst I smoked my pipe, he would talk to me by
the hour of the old regiment; such talk is better than any book. If
Osman had lived, I never would have summoned you—no, never; he
stayed with me till death took him, and you must remain here till
death takes me.”
“I will take you with me,” said his son, resolutely. “All you have
been telling me shows me that this country is not the place for you.
The sooner you are back in England, the better; you will come home
with me, will you not?”
“I don’t want to see England,” he answered peevishly. “India is my
country, it has got into my blood. I have spent my bright days out
here, and here I’ll spend my dark ones. My days are dark indeed, but
they will soon be over, and so much the better. And now it is eleven
o’clock,” he said, rising stiffly. “Let us go in to breakfast.”
After breakfast Major Jervis promptly disappeared, leaving his
guest to wander about alone; to wonder at the extraordinary
ménage, the troops of native children, pattering in and out, the fowl,
the goats—who stumped through the hall as if they wore boots—the
overpowering smell of huka, the great dreary rooms, piled up with
rotting furniture, saddlery, and carpets. Among other wrecks, he
noticed an old dandy and a side-saddle—doubtless the property of
the dead Mércèdes.
He strolled about the valley, to the amazement of the hill people,
who stared at him open-mouthed. How, he asked himself, was he to
pass the long empty hours till sunset? For the bearer had
condescendingly assured him, that “the sahib would sleep until
then.” He had taken a violent dislike to fat-cheeked Fuzzil, who
scarcely troubled himself to obey an order, and had invariably to be
summoned several times before he condescended to appear. A civil
Pahari, touched by the young sahib’s forlorn and aimless
wanderings, volunteered to guide him to the cantonment. “A
cantonment here?” he echoed incredulously, and accepted the offer
with alacrity. A brisk walk by narrow tracks and goat-paths brought
them to the brow of a hill in a southward direction, overlooking an
abandoned station, Mark’s guide volubly explaining to him that thirty
years before had been full of gorrah-log (soldiers) from the plains.
There were the barracks, the bungalows, and gardens, with trees
that bore apples even now! But the cholera came one year and killed
half a pultoon (regiment) and the rest went away, and never came
back, except once or twice, so folks said, for “a tamashah.”
“A tamashah—what do you mean?” asked Jervis, sharply. Was
this burly hill man daring to chaff him?
“Sahibs and mem sahibs—eating, drinking, and having music and
nautches. For the rest,” with a shrug, “the place was given over to
Bhoots and fiends.”
A wide cart road, grass grown, led into the deserted cantonment,
and Mark followed it on to the parade ground. There was the mess-
house still habitable, the church roofless, encircled by a well-filled
God’s acre, kept in perfect order. Here was, indeed, a most
surprising sight, a graveyard in the wilds, not over-grown or choked
with weeds and bushes, but every stone and slab free from moss,
every grave tended with reverent care. He went into the old echoing
mess-house, and found it in excellent repair—thanks to its beams
and doors of deodar wood—as the Pahari proudly pointed out. There
were at least twenty bungalows standing, half buried among trees
and jungle; with creepers matted down over their windows; in some
the verandahs had given away, in some the roofs had fallen in,
some, on the other hand, appeared to set time at defiance. The site
was beautifully chosen, nestling in the lap of the hills, with a peep of
the far-away plains; not a sound was to be heard save the trickling of
a streamlet, nor a living thing to be seen, save a few hill cattle, and
under a tree some vultures who were picking the bones of a dead
pony. The condemned cantonment was, for all its beauty, a
melancholy place. Beyond Haval Ghat, and sloping towards the
plains, were fields of golden corn, and villages sheltering in clumps
of trees, picturesque bananas waving their graceful leaves over huts,
that with their comfortable slab roofs resembled English cottages.
The coolie now explained that he wished to show his honour yet
another sight, and to guide him home by a different route.
Half an hour’s climbing brought them to a good-sized street, of
carved-fronted, flat-roofed hill houses. To the stranger’s horror it
seemed to be altogether populated by lepers—lepers who were old,
middle-aged, young—there were also leper children. They swarmed
out and surrounded the sahib, exhibiting every form of their hideous
disease, as they clamoured for assistance. Jervis emptied his
pockets of everything they contained in the shape of money,
dispensed alms hastily, and among the worst cases, and then
hurried away. He felt heartily ashamed of his feelings of shuddering
repulsion. Supposing he had been a leper himself—and such things
as Englishmen who were lepers were known to exist. Still he turned
headlong from that awful village of life in death, and hastily
reascended the hill towards the Pela Kothi.
The desolate cantonment and the leper-colony combined to
depress him beyond words, although the scenery was unsurpassed,
the air as exhilarating as a tonic, and the scents and sounds of the
forest enough to stir the most torpid imagination; nevertheless, Mark
Jervis felt as if he had a load upon his back, as if he had grown ten
years older in the last two days. It was not merely the scenes of the
afternoon that preyed on his spirits. There was his father—his mind
was undoubtedly shaken—he must endeavour to get him away, to
take him home; yes, at all costs.
“What a curious way he talked. Sometimes so well and sensibly;
sometimes in such incomprehensible jargon. What did he mean by
saying, ‘Osman stayed here till death took him. You must remain
here until death takes me’?”
 CHAPTER XXXIII.
“HEREDITARY.”

His long afternoon rest had revived Major Jervis; he appeared to

be another man as he sat opposite his son at dinner, and talked not
merely sensibly, but wittily, across the grimy tablecloth, on which was
exhibited smoked goat-chops and other undesirable comestibles. He
discussed the condemned cantonment—he recollected its bygone
existence. The lepers—they were his pensioners, and came for their
dole weekly—they were well looked after between missionaries and
other people. He spoke of his regiment, his former comrades; he
gave vivid descriptions of shikar expeditions, of pig-sticking, of
thrilling scenes on active service. He related anecdotes of well-
known people of his acquaintance; he boasted of his brothers-in-
arms, and described a polo tournament as if it had come off
yesterday!
“And you have quite lost sight of all these friends?” inquired his
son, after a pause.
The question seemed to break a spell; all animation suddenly
faded from the major’s face, his whole expression changed into that
of a shrunken old man as he replied—
“Yes; I left the herd, like a wounded deer, seven long years ago. I
have hidden myself from them, and I am entirely forgotten. People
are forgotten out here sooner, more completely, than in any other
country.”
“Why do you say so?” asked his son, incredulously.
“Because life is so full; events march rapidly, changes occur daily.
Cholera, war, accidents, sweep away men—and memories.”
When the table had been cleared and cigarettes produced, and
Fuzzil and his satellite had somewhat reluctantly departed, Major
Jervis looked steadily at his companion for some time, and
exclaimed at last—
“You are very like me, Mark! I can see it myself; and I was
considered a good-looking fellow. I had a bigger frame, though; I
rode a couple of stone heavier. But you are a stronger man than your
father; you have a square jaw and a stern will. You can say no. I
never could get out that word in time—and many troubles were my
lot. You wish me to go home with you, my boy?”
“I do,” was the laconic and emphatic reply.
“And I want you to stay with me; you must remain with me. I have
not long to live. Look at me well.”
Mark glanced at his sunken eyes, his worn, emaciated features.
“And you must see the last of me. I don’t intend to let you go; no,
for once I, too, can say no.”
“But, nevertheless, I’m afraid you must let me go, sir, and shortly. I
promised Uncle Dan——”
“Yes,” he interrupted with unexpected passion, “I understand what
you would say; that you would thrust your uncle down my throat. But,
after all, are you not my son—not his? I reared you until you were
ten years old. When you were a small child and burning with fever,
who was it that used to walk up and down with you in his arms for
hours? Not your uncle Dan. Who was it that first set you on the back
of a pony and taught you to sit like a Bengal sowar? Not your uncle
Dan. Who was it that lifted you out of your dying mother’s embrace?
Not your uncle Dan. You are my own flesh and blood; in all the wide
world I have now no one but you. Since Osman died I have not a
single friend. I am surrounded by vampires of servants. My heir
prays on his knees nightly to his patron saint for the telegram that
will carry the news of my death. I believe the form is here in Fuzzil’s
possession, filled up, all but the date! I am a miserable, solitary,
dying wretch, and I appeal to you, my son, to spare me a few months
of your healthy, happy life, and to stay beside me and protect me. Do
I,” leaning his elbows on the table, and searching his son’s face
intently, “appeal in vain?”
 “You wish me to live here with you altogether?”
“Yes,” with curt emphasis.
“To give up my uncle?”
“For a time, yes. I seem cruelly selfish, but I am as a drowning
man snatching at a spar. You will stay?” A tremor ran through his
voice.
“I cannot. No; I promised Uncle Dan that I would certainly return,”
rejoined his son firmly.
“Your uncle has health, wealth, a wife, and many friends. Surely he
can spare you to a sick and desolate man. The Almighty has afflicted
me sorely. If you abandon me to my fate, and gallop back to your
gay life and companions, the day will come when you will bitterly
repent it. Osman’s burthen has fallen on you, and will my own son do
less for me than an alien in blood, a Mahomedan in faith, a poor,
unenlightened, faithful sowar?”
And he stretched out his hand, and fixed an interrogative gaze on
his companion. The paleness of concentrated feeling tinged the
young man’s face, a few drops of sweat stood on his forehead.
“Mark, what is your answer?” he demanded in a hoarse whisper.
“Be quick. Say yes or no—yes or no.”
“Not now, sir,” suddenly standing up. “You must give me time. Give
me forty-eight hours.”
“Ah, there is something more than your uncle,” with a swift
expressive glance; and he rose and put his hands heavily on his
son’s shoulders. “I know,” gazing straight into his eyes with a mad
keenness in his look, “there is, of course, a woman in the case?”
“There is,” admitted Mark, holding himself erect. “An hour before I
got your letter, I had asked a girl to be my wife.”
“And you need not tell me her answer—yes, of course; young,
rich, handsome! The world is full of women—over-run with them. A
man can have fifty sweethearts, but he has only one father!”