sank in disappointment as they lived with him through the days of
depression. And as they came day by day to know of the honesty of his
mind, the steadfastness of his purpose, to feel that flame which glowed
within him, they fairly spoke his name in different voice from that used
for other things, and when they told their stories of his eccentricities,
it was with a tenderness in their humour, never as though blurring his
greatness, but rather as if his very little weaknesses and foibles set
him apart from and above every one else.

Generations before, his ancestors up there in North Europe had swept
things before them with a mighty hand. With defeat and renunciation they
did not reckon. If they loved a woman, they picked her up and took her
away. And civilisation has not quite washed the blood of those men from
the earth. Germany gave to Karl Hubers something more than a scholar's
mind. At any rate, he did a very unapproved and most uncivilised thing.
When he fell in love and decided he wanted to marry Ernestine Stanley,
and that he wanted to take her right over to Europe and show her the
things he loved there, he asked for his year's leave of absence before he
went to find out whether Miss Stanley was kindly disposed to the idea of
marrying him. Now why he did that, it is not possible to state, but the
thing proving him quite hopeless as a civilised product is that it never
struck him there was anything so very peculiar in his order of procedure.

His assistants had to do a great deal of reminding after he came back
that week, and they never knew until afterwards that his abstraction was
caused by something quite different from germs. They thought--unknowing
assistants--that he was on a new trail, and judged from the expression of
his face that it was going to prove most productive.