e: of few
features, simple, grand in outline as a face of one of the early gods.
It lay utterly motionless before him, not a fleck of cloud in the pure
blue above, even where the mist rose from the river; it only had
glorified the clear blue into clearer violet.

Holmes stood quietly looking; he could have created a picture like
this, if he never had seen one; therefore he was able to recognize it,
accepted it into his soul, and let it do what it would there.

Suddenly a low wind from the far Pacific coast struck from the amber
line where the sun went down. A faint tremble passed over the great
hills, the broad sweeps of colour darkened from base to summit, then
flashed again,--while below, the prairie rose and fell like a dun sea,
and rolled in long, slow, solemn waves.

The wind struck so broad and fiercely in Holmes's face that he caught
his breath. It was a savage freedom, he thought, in the West there,
whose breath blew on him,--the freedom of the primitive man, the
untamed animal man, self-reliant and self-assertant, having conquered
Nature. Well, this fierce, masterful freedom was good for the soul,
sometimes, doubtless. It was old Knowles's vital air. He wondered if
the old man would succeed in his hobby, if he could make the slavish
beggars and thieves in the alleys yonder comprehend this fierce
freedom. They craved leave to live on sufferance now, not knowing their
possible divinity. It was a desperate remedy, this sense of unchecked
liberty; but their disease was desperate. As for himself, he did not
need it; that element was not lacking. In a mere bodily sense, to be
sure. He felt his arm. Yes, the cold rigor of this new life had
already worn off much of the clogging weight of flesh, strengthened the
muscles. Six months more in the West would toughen the fibres to iron.
He raised an iron weight that lay on the steps, carelessly testing
them. For the rest, he was going back here; something of the cold,
loose freshness got into his brain, he believed. In the two years of
absence his power of concentration had been stronger, his perceptions
more free from prejudice, gaining every day delicate point, acuteness
of analysis. He drew a long breath of the icy air, coarse with the
wild perfume of the prairie. No, his temperament needed a subtiler
atmosphere than this, rarer essence than mere brutal freedom The East,
the Old World, was his proper sphere for self-development. He would go
as soon as h