“I am glad to hear it,” was the answer.  “That my smattering of knowledge should enable me to short-cut my way to truth is most reassuring.  As for myself, I never bother to find out if I am right or not.  It is all valueless anyway.  Man can never know the ultimate verities.”

“You are a disciple of Spencer!” Martin cried triumphantly.

“I haven’t read him since adolescence, and all I read then was his ‘Education.’”

“I wish I could gather knowledge as carelessly,” Martin broke out half an hour later.  He had been closely analyzing Brissenden’s mental equipment.  “You are a sheer dogmatist, and that’s what makes it so marvellous.  You state dogmatically the latest facts which science has been able to establish only by a posteriori reasoning.  You jump at correct conclusions.  You certainly short-cut with a vengeance.  You feel your way with the speed of light, by some hyperrational process, to truth.”

“Yes, that was what used to bother Father Joseph, and Brother Dutton,” Brissenden replied.  “Oh, no,” he added; “I am not anything.  It was a lucky trick of fate that sent me to a Catholic college for my education.  Where did you pick up what you know?”

And while Martin told him, he was busy studying Brissenden, ranging from a long, lean, aristocratic face and drooping shoulders to the overcoat on a neighboring chair, its pockets sagged and bulged by the freightage of many books.  Brissenden’s face and long, slender hands were browned by the sun—­excessively browned, Martin thought.  This sunburn bothered Martin.  It was patent that Brissenden was no outdoor man.  Then how had he been ravaged by the sun?  Something morbid and significant attached to that sunburn, was Martin’s thought as he returned to a study of the face, narrow, with high cheek-bones and cavernous hollows, and graced with as delicate and fine an aquiline nose as Martin had ever seen.  There was nothing remarkable about the size of the eyes.  They were neither large nor small, while their color was a nondescript brown; but in them smouldered a fire, or, rather, lurked an expression dual and strangely contradictory.  Defiant, indomitable, even harsh to excess, they at the same time aroused pity.  Martin found himself pitying him he knew not why, though he was soon to learn.

“Oh, I’m a lunger,” Brissenden announced, offhand, a little later, having already stated that he came from Arizona.  “I’ve been down there a couple of years living on the climate.”

“Aren’t you afraid to venture it up in this climate?”

“Afraid?”

There was no special emphasis of his repetition of Martin’s word.  But Martin saw in that ascetic face the advertisement that there was nothing of which it was afraid.  The eyes had narrowed till they were eagle-like, and Martin almost caught his breath as he noted the eagle beak with its dilated nostrils, defiant, assertive, aggressive.  Magnificent, was what he commented to himself, his blood thrilling at the sight.  Aloud, he quoted:-