ed out, Sir. I hardly look for
success."

"Will you try again?"

"No, I'll not try again."

He had drawn away and stood by the window, his face hidden by the
curtain. The Doctor was baffled.

"You have yourself lost faith in your invention?"

Something of the old fierceness flashed into the man's eye, but died
out.

"No matter," he said under his breath, shaking his head, and putting his
hand in a feeble way to his mouth.

"Inanition of soul as well as body," thought the Doctor. "I'll rouse
him, cruel or not."

"Have you anything to which to turn, if this disappoints you? Home or
friends?"

He waited for an answer. When it came, he felt like an intruder, the man
was so quiet, far-off.

"I have nothing,--no friends,--unless I count that boy in the next room.
Eh? He has fragments of the old knightly spirit, if his brain be
cracked. No others."

"Well, well! You'll forgive me?" said the Doctor. "I did not mean to be
coarse. Only I--The matter will succeed, I know. You will find happiness
in that. Money and fame will come after."

The old man looked up and came towards him with a certain impressive
dignity, though the snuff-colored clothes were bagging about his limbs,
and his eyes were heavy and unsteady.

"You're not coarse. No. I'm glad you spoke to me in that way. It is as
if you stopped my life short, and made me look before and behind. But
you don't understand. I"--

He put his hand to his head, then began buttoning his coat uncertainly,
with a deprecating, weak smile.

"I don't know what the matter is. I'm not strong as I used to be."

"You need success."

How strong and breezy the Doctor's voice sounded!

"Cheer up, Mr. Starke. You're a stronger-brained man than I, and twenty
years younger. It's something to have lived for a single high purpose
like yours, if you succeed. And if not, God's life is broad, and needs
other things than air-engines. Perhaps you've been 'in training,' as the
street-talk goes, getting your muscles and nerves well grown, and your
real work and fight are yet to come."

"I don't know," said the man, dully.

Dr. Bowdler, perhaps, with well-breathed body and soul, did not quite
comprehend how vacant and well worn out both heart and lungs were under
poor Starke's bony chest.

"You don't seem to comprehend what this engine is to me.--You said the
world was broad. I had a mind, even when I was a boy, to do something in
it. My father was a small farmer over there in th