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 he could
command the means, leaving all clogs behind. ALL? His idle
thought balked here, suddenly; the sallow forehead contracted
sharply, and his gray eyes grew in an instant shallow, careless,
formal, as a man who holds back his thought. There was a fierce
warring in his brain for a moment. Then he brushed his Kossuth
hat with his arm, and put it on, looking out at the landscape
again. Somehow its meaning was dulled to him. Just then a muddy
terrier came up, and rubbed itself against his knee. "Why, Tige,
old boy!" he said, stooping to pat it kindly. The hard, shallow
look faded out; he half smiled, looking in the dog's eyes. A
curious smile, unspeakably tender and sad. It was the
idiosyncrasy of the man's face, rarely seen there. He might have
looked with it at a criminal, condemning him to death. But he
would have condemned him, and, if no hangman could be found,
would have put the rope on with his own hands, and then most
probably would have sat down pale and trembling, and analyzed his
sensations on paper,--being sincere in all.

He sat down on the school-house step, which the boys had hacked