ace.

"God help you, Stephen!" he broke out, his shallow jeering falling off.
"For there _is_ a God higher than we. The ills of life you mean to
conquer will teach it to you, Holmes. You'll find the Something above
yourself, if it's only to curse Him and die."

Holmes did not smile at the old man's heat,--walked gravely, steadily.

There was a short silence. The old man put his hand gently on the
other's arm.

"Stephen," he hesitated, "you're a stronger man than I. I know what you
are; I've watched you from a boy. But you're wrong here. I'm an old man.
There's not much I know in life,--enough to madden me. But I do know
there's something stronger,--some God outside of the mean devil they
call 'Me.' You'll learn it, boy. There's an old story of a man like you
and the rest of your sect, and of the vile, mean, crawling things that
God sent to bring him down. There are such things yet. Mean passions in
your divine soul, low, selfish things, that will get the better of you,
show you what you are. You'll do all that man can do. But they are
coming, Stephen Holmes! they're coming!"

He stopped, startled. For Holmes had turned abruptly, glancing over at
the city with a strange wistfulness. It was over in a moment. He resumed
the slow, controlling walk beside him. They went on in silence into
town, and when they did speak, it was on indifferent subjects, not
referring to the last. The Doctor's heat, as it usually did, boiled out
in spasms on trifles. Once he stumped his toe, and, I am sorry to say,
swore roundly about it, just as he would have done in the new Arcadia,
if one of the jail-birds comprising that colony had been ungrateful for
his advantages. Philanthropists, for some curious reason, are not the
most amiable members of small families.

He gave Holmes the roll of parchment he had in his pocket, looking
keenly at him, as he did so, but only saying, that, if he meant to sign
it, it would be done to-morrow. As Holmes took it, they stopped at the
great door of the factory. He went in alone, Knowles going down the
street. One trifle, strange in its way, he remembered afterwards.
Holding the roll of paper in his hand that would make the mill his, he
went, in his slow, grave way, down the long passage to the loom-rooms.
There was a crowd of porters and firemen there, as usual, and he thought
one of them hastily passed him in the dark passage, hiding behind an
engine. As the shadow fell on him, his teeth chattered with