his heavy, quick, irregular tread, swearing under his breath; and you
would imagine, from what you heard, that all his thoughts and the
movement of his mind were a blasphemy. Then again--but this was only
once--he heaved a deep, ponderous sigh, that seemed to come up in spite
of him, out of his depths, an exhalation of deep suffering, as if some
convulsion had given it a passage to upper air, instead of its being
hidden, as it generally was, by accumulated rubbish of later time
heaped above it.

This latter sound appealed to something within the simple schoolmaster,
who had been witnessing the demeanor of the Doctor, like a being
looking from another sphere into the trouble of the mortal one; a being
incapable of passion, observing the mute, hard struggle of one in its
grasp.

"Friend," said he at length, "thou hast something on thy mind."

"Aye," said the grim Doctor, coming to a stand before his chair. "You
see that? Can you see as well what it is?"

"Some stir and writhe of something in the past that troubles you, as if
you had kept a snake for many years in your bosom, and stupefied it
with brandy, and now it awakes again, and troubles you with bites and
stings."

"What sort of a man do you think me?" asked the Doctor.

"I cannot tell," said the schoolmaster. "The sympathies of my nature
are not those that should give me knowledge of such men."