Holmes did not smile at the old man’s heat,—­walked gravely, steadily.

There was a short silence.  The old man put his hand gently on the other’s arm.

“Stephen,” he hesitated, “you’re a stronger man than I. I know what you are; I’ve watched you from a boy.  But you’re wrong here.  I’m an old man.  There’s not much I know in life,—­enough to madden me.  But I do know there’s something stronger,—­some God outside of the mean devil they call ‘Me.’  You’ll learn it, boy.  There’s an old story of a man like you and the rest of your sect, and of the vile, mean, crawling things that God sent to bring him down.  There are such things yet.  Mean passions in your divine soul, low, selfish things, that will get the better of you, show you what you are.  You’ll do all that man can do.  But they are coming, Stephen Holmes! they’re coming!”

He stopped, startled.  For Holmes had turned abruptly, glancing over at the city with a strange wistfulness.  It was over in a moment.  He resumed the slow, controlling walk beside him.  They went on in silence into town, and when they did speak, it was on indifferent subjects, not referring to the last.  The Doctor’s heat, as it usually did, boiled out in spasms on trifles.  Once he stumped his toe, and, I am sorry to say, swore roundly about it, just as he would have done in the new Arcadia, if one of the jail-birds comprising that colony had been ungrateful for his advantages.  Philanthropists, for some curious reason, are not the most amiable members of small families.

He gave Holmes the roll of parchment he had in his pocket, looking keenly at him, as he did so, but only saying, that, if he meant to sign it, it would be done to-morrow.  As Holmes took it, they stopped at the great door of the factory.  He went in alone, Knowles going down the street.  One trifle, strange in its way, he remembered afterwards.  Holding the roll of paper in his hand that would make the mill his, he went, in his slow, grave way, down the long passage to the loom-rooms.  There was a crowd of porters and firemen there, as usual, and he thought one of them hastily passed him in the dark passage, hiding behind an engine.  As the shadow fell on him, his teeth chattered with a chilly shudder.  He smiled, thinking how superstitious people would say that some one trod on his grave just then, or that Death looked at him, and went on.  Afterwards he thought of it.  Going through the office, the fat old book-keeper, Huff, stopped him with a story he had been keeping for him all day.  He liked to tell a story to Holmes; he could see into a joke; it did a man good to hear a fellow laugh like that.  Holmes did laugh, for the story was a good one, and stood a moment, then went in, leaving the old fellow chuckling over his desk.  Huff did not know how, lately, after every laugh, this man felt a vague scorn of himself, as if jokes and laughter belonged to a self that ought to have been dead long ago.  Perhaps,