out at the landscape again.  Somehow its meaning was dulled to him.  Just then a muddy terrier came up, and rubbed itself against his knee.  “Why, Tige, old boy!” he said, stooping to pat it kindly.  The hard, shallow look faded out, and he half smiled, looking in the dog’s eyes.  A curious smile, unspeakably tender and sad.  It was the idiosyncrasy of the man’s face, rarely seen there.  He might have looked with it at a criminal, condemning him to death.  But he would have condemned him, and, if no hangman could be found, would have put the rope on with his own hands, and then most probably would have sat down pale and trembling, and analyzed his sensations on paper,—­being sincere in all.

He sat down on the school-house step, which the boys had hacked and whittled rough, and waited; for he was there by appointment, to meet Dr. Knowles.

Knowles had gone out early in the morning to look at the ground he was going to buy for his Phalanstery, or whatever he chose to call it.  He was to bring the deed of sale of the mill out with him for Holmes.  The next day it was to be signed.  Holmes saw him at last lumbering across the prairie, wiping the perspiration from his forehead.  Summer or winter, he contrived to be always hot.  There was a cart drawn by an old donkey coming along beside him.  Knowles was talking to the driver.  The old man clapped his hands as stage-coachmen do, and drew in long draughts of air, as if there were keen life and promise in every breath.  They came up at last, the cart empty, and drying for the day’s work after its morning’s scrubbing, Lois’s pock-marked face all in a glow with trying to keep Barney awake.  She grew quite red with pleasure at seeing Holmes, but went on quickly as the men began to talk.  Tige followed her, of course; but when she had gone a little way across the prairie, they saw her stop, and presently the dog came back with something in his mouth, which he laid down beside his master, and bolted off.  It was only a rough wicker-basket which she had filled with damp plushy moss, and half-buried in it clusters of plumy fern, delicate brown and ashen lichens, masses of forest-leaves all shaded green with a few crimson tints.  It had a clear woody smell, like far-off myrrh.  The Doctor laughed as Holmes took it up.

“An artist’s gift, if it is from a mulatto,” he said.  “A born colorist.”

The men were not at ease, for some reason; they seized on every trifle to keep off the subject which had brought them together.

“That girl’s artist-sense is pure, and her religion, down under the perversion and ignorance of her brain.  Curious, eh?”

“Look at the top of her head, when you see her,” said Holmes.  “It is necessity for such brains to worship.  They let the fire lick their blood, if they happen to be born Parsees.  This girl, if she had been a Jew when Christ was born, would have known him as Simeon did.”

Knowles said nothing,—­only glanced at the massive head of the speaker, with its overhanging brow, square development at the sides, and lowered crown, and smiled significantly.