e was neither love nor scorn in
his look,--a mere fixedness of purpose to make use of her some day. He
talked, meanwhile, glancing at her now and then, as if the subject they
discussed were indirectly linked with his plan for her. If it were,
she was unconscious of it. She sat on the wooden step of the porch,
looking out on the melancholy sweep of meadow and hill range growing
cool and dimmer in the dun twilight, not hearing what they said, until
the sharpened, earnest tones roused her.

"You will fail, Knowles."

It was her father who spoke.

"Nothing can save such a scheme from failure. Neither the French nor
German Socialists attempted to base their systems on the lowest class,
as you design."

"I know," said Knowles. "That accounts for their partial success."

"Let me understand your plan practically," eagerly demanded her father.

She thought Knowles evaded the question,--wished to leave the subject.
Perhaps he did not regard the poor old school-master as a practical
judge of practical matters. All his life he had called him thriftless
and unready.

"It never will do, Knowles," he went on in his slow way. "Any plan,
Phalanstery or Community, call it what you please, founded on self
government, is based on a sham, the tawdriest of shams."

The old school-master shook his head as one who knows, and tried to
push the thin gray hairs out of his eyes in a groping way. Margret
lifted them back, so quietly that he did not feel her.

"You'll call the Republic a sham next!" said the Doctor, coolly
aggravating.

"The Republic!" The old man quickened his tone, like a war-horse
scenting the battle near at hand. "There never was a thinner-crusted
Devil's egg in the world than democracy. I think I've told you that
before?"

"I think you have," said the other, dryly.

"You always were a Tory, Mr. Howth," said his wife, in her placid,
creamy way. "It is in the blood, I think, Doctor. The Howths fought
under Cornwallis, you know."

The school-master waited until his wife had ended.

"Very true, Mrs. Howth," he said, with a grave smile. Then his thin
face grew hot again.

"No, Dr. Knowles. Your scheme is but a sign of the mad age we live in.
Since the thirteenth century, when the anarchic element sprang
full-grown into the history of humanity, that history has been chaos.
And this republic is the culmination of chaos."

"Out of chaos came the new-born earth," suggested the Doctor.

"But its founda