The school-master's cane beat an angry tattoo on the hearth.

"You sneer at Comte? Because, having the clearest eye, the
widest sweeping eye ever given to man, he had no more? It was to
show how far flesh can go alone. Could he help it, if God
refused the prophet's vision?"

"I'm sure, Samuel," interrupted his wife with a sorrowful
earnestness, "your own eyes were as strong as a man's could be.
It was ten years after I wore spectacles that you began. Only
for that miserable fever, you could read shorthand now."

Her own blue eyes filled with tears. There was a sudden silence.
Margret shivered, as if some pain stung her. Holding her
father's bony hand in hers, she patted it on her knee. The hand
trembled a little. Knowles's sharp eyes darted from one to the
other; then, with a smothered growl, he shook himself, and rushed
headlong into the old battle which he and the school-master had
been waging now, off and on, some six years. That was a fight, I
can tell you! None of your shallow, polite clashing of modern
theories,--no talk of your Jeffersonian Democracy, your high-bred
Federalism! They took hold of the matter by the roots, clear at
the beginning.

Mrs. Howth's breath fairly left her, they went into the soul of
the matter in such a dangerous way. What if Joel should hear?
No doubt he would report that his master was an infidel,-- that
would be the next thing they would hear. He was in the kitchen
now: he finished his wood-chopping an hour ago. Asleep,