It baffled the man that looked at
it. He shuffled, chewed tobacco vehemently, tilted his chair on
two legs, broke out in a thunder-gust at last.
"Dead days for dead men! The world hears a bugle-call to-day
more noble than any of your piping troubadours. We have
something better to fight for than a vacant tomb."
The old man drew himself up haughtily.
"I know what you would say,--Liberty for the low and vile. It is
a good word. That was a better which they hid in their hearts in
the old time,--Honour!"
Honour! I think, Calvinist though he was, that word was his
religion. Men have had worse. Perhaps the Doctor thought this;
for he rose abruptly, and, leaning on the old man's chair, said,
gently,--
"It is better, even here. Yet you poison this child's mind. You
make her despise To-Day; make honour live for her now."
"It does not," the school-master said, bitterly. "The world's a
failure. All the great old dreams are dead. Your own phantom,
your Republic, your experiment to prove that all men are born
free and equal,--what is it to-day?"
Knowles lifted his head, looking out into the brown twilight.
Some word of pregnant meaning flashed in his eye and trembled on
his lip; but he kept it back. His face glowed, though, and the
glow and strength gave to the huge misshapen features a grand
repose.
"You talk of To-Day," the old man continued, querulously. "I am
tired of it. Here is its type and history," touching a county
newspaper,--"a fair type, with its cant, and bigotry, and weight
of uncomprehended fact.
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