Knowles sat, peering at Holmes over his paper, watching the languid breath that showed how deep the hurt had been, the maimed body, the face outwardly cool, watchful, reticent as before. He fancied the slough of disappointment into which God had crushed the soul of this man: would he struggle out? Would he take Miss Herne as the first step in his stairway, or be content to be flung down in vigorous manhood to the depth of impotent poverty? He could not tell if the quiet on Holmes's face were stolid defiance or submission: the dumb kings might have looked thus beneath the feet of Pharaoh. When he walked over the floor, too, weak as he was, it was with the old iron tread. He asked Knowles presently what business he had gone into.
"My old hobby in an humble way,—the House of Refuge."
They both laughed.
"Yes, it is true. The janitor points me out to visitors as 'under-superintendent, a philanthropist in decayed circumstances.' Perhaps it is my life-work,"—growing sad and earnest.
"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!