“If you can inoculate these infant beggars and thieves with your theory, it will be practice when you are dead.”

“I think that,” said Knowles, gravely, his eye kindling,—­“I think that.”

“As thankless a task as that of Moses,” said the other, watching him curiously.  “For you will not see the pleasant land,—­you will not go over.”

The old man’s flabby face darkened.

“I know,” he said.

He glanced involuntarily out at the blue, and the clear-shining, eternal stars.  If he could but believe in the To-Morrow!

“I suppose,” he said, after a while, cheerfully, “I must content myself with Lois’s creed, here,—­’It’ll come right some time.’”

Lois looked up from the saucepan she was stirring, her face growing quite red, nodding emphatically some half-dozen times.

“Do you find your fallow field easily worked?”

Knowles fidgeted uneasily.

“No.  Fact is, I’m beginning to think there’s a good deal of an obstacle in blood.  I find difficulty, much difficulty, Sir, in giving the youngest child true ideas of absolute freedom and unselfish heroism.”

“You teach them by reason alone?” said Holmes, gravely.

“Well,—­of course,—­that is the true theory; but I—­I find it necessary to have them whipped, Mr. Holmes.”

Holmes stooped suddenly to pat Tiger, hiding a furtive smile.  The old man went on, anxiously,—­

“Old Mr. Howth says that is the end of all self-governments:  from anarchy to despotism, he says.  Old people are apt to be set in their ways, you know.  Honestly, we do not find unlimited freedom answer in the House.  I hope much from a woman’s assistance:  I have destined her for this work always:  she has great latent power of sympathy and endurance, such as can bring the Christian teaching home to these wretches.”

“The Christian?” said Holmes.

“Well, yes.  I am not a believer myself, you know; but I find that it takes hold of these people more vitally than more abstract faiths:  I suppose because of the humanity of Jesus.  In Utopia, of course, we shall live from scientific principles; but they do not answer in the House.”

“Who is the woman?” asked Holmes, carelessly.

The other watched him keenly.

“She is coming for five years.  Margaret Howth.”

He patted the dog with the same hard, unmoved touch.

“It is a religious duty with her.  Besides, she must do something.  They have been almost starving since the mill was burnt.”

Holmes’s face was bent; he could not see it.  When he looked up, Knowles thought it more rigid, immovable than before.

When Knowles was going away, Holmes said to him,—­

“When does Margaret Howth go into that devils’ den?”

“The House?  On New-Year’s.”  The scorn in him was too savage to be silent.  “You will have fulfilled your design by that time,—­of marriage?”