“Advanced?” said little Herr Bluhm, the phrenologist.

“Well, no.  But Doctor Maria thinks his mind is open to conviction, and that he would prove a strong worker should he remain here.  She has already begun to enlighten him on our newest theories as to a Spontaneous Creation and a Consolidated Republic.”

“Should think his properer study would be potatoes.  Smells of the barn-yard in his talk,” rejoined one of the party.

“Doctor Maria’s a fool!” snapped Bluhm.  “She has read the index to Bastian’s book, and denies her Creator, and gabbles of Bacteria, boiled and unboiled, ever since.”

Doctor McCall meanwhile went down the cinder-path, to all passers-by a clean-shaven, healthy gentleman out in search of an appetite for breakfast.  But in reality he was deciding his whole life in that brief walk.  Why, he asked himself once or twice, should he be unlike the other clean-shaven, healthy men that he met?  God knows he had no relish for mystery.  He was, as he had told Kitty, a commonplace man, a thrifty Delaware farmer, in hearty good-fellowship with his neighbors, his cattle, the ground he tilled, and, he thought reverently, with the God who had made him and them.  He had made a mistake in his early youth, but it was a mistake which every tenth man makes—­which had no doubt driven half these men and women about him into their visionary creeds and hard work—­that of an unhappy marriage.  It was many years since he had heard of his wife:  she had grown tired of warning him of the new paths of shame and crime she had found for herself.  In fact, the year in which they had lived together was now so long past as to seem like a miserable half-forgotten dream.

Irretrievable?  Yes, it was irretrievable.  There was, first of all, the stupid, boyish error of a change of name.  If he came back as this child wished, all the annoyance which that entailed would follow him, and the humiliating circumstances which had led to it would be brought to life from their unclean graves.  His father believed him dead.  Better the quiet, softened grief which that had left than the disgrace which would follow his return.  “I should have to tell him my wife’s story,” muttered McCall.  But he did not turn pale nor break into a cold sweat at the remembrance, as Miss Muller’s hero should have done.  This was an old sore—­serious enough, but one which he meant to make the best of, according to his habit.  He had been a fool, he thought, to come back and hang about the old place for the pleasure of hearing his father talked of, and of touching the things he had handled a day or two before.  Growing into middle age, Hugh Guinness’s likeness to his father had increased year by year.  The two men were simple as boys in some respects, and would have been satisfied alone together.  The younger man halted now on the foot-bridge which crossed the creek, looking out the different hollows where his father had taken him to fish when he was a boy, and thinking of their life then.  “But his wife and mine would have to be put into the scales now,” with an attempt at whistling which died out discordantly.