Robert Stead, turning fifty, tall and well knit, had heavy, matted brown hair, beard cut close, and impenetrable eyes, whose colour no one could tell offhand, any more than he might read the meaning of the mustache-hid mouth. His firm walk and clear skin told of strength and present outdoor life; his slightly rounded shoulders spoke either of past indoor hours or the resistless, flinching attitude where a man ceases to face the storms of life with chest thrown out and head erect as if to say to warring elements—“See, I am ready; come and do your worst!” “Silent Stead” people hereabout called him from his taciturnity, and he either held his short brier close against his lips and puffed between tightly clinched teeth, as if pulling against time, or in the revulsion let the flame die out until, forgotten, the pipe hung cold, bitter, and noisome between his lips. Dr. Russell’s pipe, a plain meerschaum of moderate length, held with light firmness, was smoked deliberately as something that soothed yet held in no thrall, and when its first sweetness passed, with a sharp, cleansing rap, he returned the pipe to his pocket. Though in the later sixties, the doctor radiated all the hope of youth. One realized that his was a face to trust, even before compassing its details; the easy turn of his shapely, well-poised head, with its closely cut hair blended of steel and silver, every glance of his searching gray eyes, that looked frankly from under eyebrows that were still black, conveyed both comprehension and sympathy. His nose was straight and not too long, and the thin nostrils quivered with all the sensitiveness of a highly strung horse, while the mouth was saved from the sternness to which the firm chin seemed to pledge it by a drooping of the corners that told of a keen sense of humour. In stature he was of medium height, but his shoulders were still squared to the burdens of life, and his erect carriage made him appear tall; but, after all, the secret of his youth lay in a quality of mind, the very quality that the younger man lacked—his steadfast faith and confidence in his fellow-men; this had lasted undaunted by disappointment during the forty years and more that he had held to them the closest, wisest, and most blessed of human ministries—that of the good physician.