These knights, pure, unstained, searching until death
for the Holy Grail, could he understand the life-long agony, the
triumph of their conflict over Self? These women, content to live in
solitude forever because they once had loved, could any man understand
that? Or the dead queen, dead that the man she loved might be free and
happy,--why, this WAS life,--this death! But did pain, and martyrdom,
and victory lie back in the days of Galahad and Arthur alone? The
homely face grew stiller than before, looking out into the dun sweep of
moorland,--cold, unrevealing. 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. Bargain and sale,--it taints our religion, our brains, our
flags,--yours and mine, Knowles, with the rest. Did you never hear of
those abject spirits who entered neither heaven nor hell, who were
neither faithful to God nor rebellious, caring only for themselves?"

He paused, fairly out of breath. Margret looked up. Knowles was