“Yes, for you.”

She turned her eyes slowly around, bewildered.  The clear evening light fell on Holmes, as he stood there looking down at the dying little lamiter:  a powerful figure, with a face supreme, masterful, but tender:  you will find no higher type of manhood.  Did God make him of the same blood as the vicious, cringing wretch crouching to hide his black face at the other side of the bed?  Some such thought came into Lois’s brain, and vexed her, bringing the tears to her eyes:  he was her father, you know.

“It’s all wrong,” she muttered,—­“oh, it’s far wrong!  Ther’ ’s One could make them ’like.  Not me.”

She stroked her father’s head once, and then let it go.  Holmes glanced out, and saw the sun was down.

“Lois,” he said, “I want you to wish me a happy Christmas, as people do.”

Holmes had a curious vein of superstition:  he knew no lips so pure as this girl’s, and he wanted them to wish him good-luck that night.  She did it, laughing and growing red:  riddles of life did not trouble her childish fancy long.  And so he left her, with a dull feeling, as I said before, that it was good to say a prayer before the battle came on.  For men who believed in prayers:  for him, it was the same thing to make one day for Lois happier.

METHODS OF STUDY IN NATURAL HISTORY.

IV.

In presenting Classification as the subject of a series of papers in the “Atlantic Monthly,” I am aware that I am drawing largely upon the patience of its readers; since the technical nature of the topic renders many details necessary which cannot be otherwise than dry to any but professional naturalists.  Yet believing, as I do, that classification, rightly understood, means simply the creative plan of God as expressed in organic forms, I feel the importance of attempting at least to present it in a popular guise, divested, as far as possible, of technicalities, while I would ask the indulgence of my readers for such scientific terms and details as cannot well be dispensed with, begging them to remember that a long and tedious road may bring us suddenly upon a glorious prospect, and that a clearer mental atmosphere and a new intellectual sensation may well reward us for a little weariness in the outset.  Besides, the time has come when scientific truth must cease to be the property of the few, when it must be woven into the common life of the world; for we have reached the point where the results of science touch the very problem of existence, and all men listen for the solving of that mystery.  When it will come, and how, none can say; but this much at least is certain, that all our researches are leading up to that question, and mankind will never rest till it is answered.  If, then, the results of science are of such general interest for the human race, if they are gradually interpreting