inside. Surprise and incredulity swept across his features, and then his
face beamed and his gray eyes lighted with the fire of an artist who
sees the elusive imagery of the Great Picture at last transferred to
canvas, vivid, actual, transcending his wildest hopes. He was gazing
upon the sweetest and most venerable face he had ever seen.

Here and there within upon the floor were strewn old-fashioned, round
rag mats that would enrapture a connoisseur, and the floor where it
showed between the mats was scrubbed to a glistening white. The
furnishings were few and homemade, but full of simple artistry--a chair
or two, and a table, upon which burned a lamp. In a fireplace, made of
stones cemented together, the natural effect unspoiled by any attempt to
hew the stones into uniformity, a log fire glowed, sputtered, and now
and then leaped cheerily into flame.

Between the table and the fire, half turned toward Madison, sat the
Patriarch. He was reading, his head bent forward, his book held very
close to his eyes. Hair, a wealth of it, soft, silky and snow-white,
reached just below his coat collar--a silvery beard fell far below his
book. But it was the face itself, no single distinguishing feature,
neither the blue eyes, the sensitive lips, nor the broad, fine forehead,
that held Madison's gaze--it seemed to combine something that he had
never seen in a face before, and to look upon it was to be drawn
instantly to the man--there was purity of thought and act stamped upon
it with a seal ineffaceable, and there was gentleness there, and
sympathy, and trust, and a simple, unassuming dignity and
self-possession--and, too, there was a shadow there, a little of
sadness, a little of weariness, a background, a relief, as it were, a
touch such as a genius might conceive to lift the picture with his brush
into wondrous, lingering, haunting consonance.