elicate brown and ashen lichens, masses of forest-leaves all shaded
green with a few crimson tints. It had a clear woody smell, like
far-off myrrh. The Doctor laughed as Holmes took it up.

"An artist's gift, if it is from a mulatto," he said. "A born
colourist."

The men were not at ease,--for some reason; they seized on every trifle
to keep off the subject which had brought them together.

"That girl's artist-sense is pure, and her religion, down under the
perversion and ignorance of her brain. Curious, eh?"

"Look at the top of her head, when you see her," said Holmes. "It is
necessity for such brains to worship. They let the fire lick their
blood, if they happen to be born Parsees. This girl, if she had been a
Jew when Christ was born, would have known him as Simeon did."

Knowles said nothing,--only glanced at the massive head of the speaker,
with its overhanging brow, square development at the sides, and lowered
crown, and smiled significantly.

"Exactly," laughed Holmes, putting his hand on his head. "Crippled
there by my Yorkshire blood,--my mother. Never mind; outside of this
life, blood or circumstance matters nothing."

They walked on slowly towards town. Surely there was nothing in the
bill-of-sale which the old man had in his pocket but a mere matter of
business; yet they were strangely silent about it, as if it brought
shame to some one. There was an embarrassed pause. The Doctor went
back to Lois for relief.

"I think it is the pain and want of such as she that makes them
susceptible to religion. The self in them is so starved and humbled
that it cannot obscure their eyes; they see God clearly."

"Say rather," said Holmes, "that the soul is so starved and blind that
it cannot recognize itself as God."

The Doctor's intolerant eye kindled.

"Humph! So that's your creed! Not Pantheism. Ego sum. Of course you
go on with the conjugation: I have been, I shall be. I,--that covers
the whole ground, creation, redemption, and commands the hereafter?"

"It does so," said Holmes, coolly.

"And this wretched huckster carries her deity about her,--her
self-existent soul? How, in God's name, is her life to set it free?"

Holmes said nothing. The coarse sneer could not be answered. Men with
pale faces and heavy jaws like his do not carry their religion on their
tongue's end; their creeds leave them only in the slow oozing
life-blood, false as the creeds may be.

Knowles went on hotly, h