ch He too knows how to refuse!"

"Thank heaven!" exclaimed Hadria. She drew a deep sigh of relief.
Without precisely realizing the fact, she had been gradually sinking
into an unformulated conviction that human beings are, at heart,
ruthless and hard, as soon as they are brought beyond the range of
familiar moral claims, which have to be respected on pain of popular
censure. Self-initiated pity was nowhere to be found. The merciless
coldness of many excellent people (kind and tender, perhaps, within
these accepted limits) had often chilled her to the heart, and prompted
a miserable doubt of the eventual victory of good over evil in the
world, which her father always insisted was ruled by mere brute force,
and would be so ruled to the end of time. She had tried to find a wider,
more generous, and less conventional standard in her oracle, Miss Du
Prel, but to her bitter disappointment, that lady had shrugged her
shoulders a little callously, as soon as she was asked to extend her
sympathy outside the circle of chartered candidates for her merciful
consideration. Hadria's hero-worship had suffered a severe rebuff. Now,
as the Professor spoke, it was as if a voice from heaven had bidden her
believe and hope fearlessly in her race, and in its destiny.

"I had almost come to shrink a little from people," she said, "as from
something cruel and savage, at heart, without a grain of real, untaught
pity."

"There is only just enough to swear by," said the Professor sadly. "We
are a lot of half-tamed savages, after all, but we may be thankful that
a capacity for almost infinite development is within us."

"I wish to heaven we could get on a little faster," exclaimed Hadria.

The incident proved, in the end, a fortunate one for the homeless, and
almost starving terrier, of plebeian lineage, whose wail of distress had
summoned two friends to the rescue. The creature had been ill-treated by
some boys, who found Sunday afternoon hang heavy on their hands. The
Professor carried the injured animal across the fields and through the
woods, to Dunaghee.

Here the wounds were dressed, and here the grateful creature found a new
and blissful home. His devotion to the Professor was unbounded; he
followed him everywhere.

Hadria's reverence and admiration rose to the highest pitch of
enthusiasm. Her father laughed at her. "Just as if any decent fellow
would not have done as much for a wounded brute!"

"There must have been a strange dea