The Doctor drawled out the words with a covert sneer, watching the cold face bending over the desk, meantime. Pike laughed. "Bah! it's the first thing he ever fed, then, besides himself. Chickens must lie nearer his heart than men." Knowles scowled at him; he had no fancy for Pike's scurrilous gossip. The quiet face was unmoved. When he heard the manager's foot on the ladder without, he tested it again. He had a vague suspicion which he was determined to verify. "Holmes," he said, carelessly, "has an affinity for animals. No wonder. Adam must have been some such man as he, when the Lord gave him 'dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air.'" The hand paused courteously a moment, then resumed its quick, cool movement over the page. He was not baffled. "If there were such a reality as mastership, that man was born to rule. Pike will find him harder to cheat than me, when he takes possession here." She looked up now. "He came here to take my place in the mills,--buy me out,--articles will be signed in a day or two. I know what you think,--no,--not worth a dollar. Only brains and a soul, and he 's sold them at a high figure,--threw his heart in,--the purchaser being a lady. It was light, I fancy,--starved out, long ago." The old man's words were spurted out in the bitterness of scorn. The girl listened with a cool incredulity in her eyes, and went back to her work. "Miss Herne is the lady,--my partner's daughter. Herne and Holmes they'll call the firm. He is here every day, counting future profit." Nothing could be read on the face; so he left her, cursing, as he went, men who put themselves up at auction,--worse than Orleans slaves. Margret laughed to herself at his passion; as for the story he hinted, it was absurd. She forgot it in a moment. Two or three gentlemen down in one of the counting-rooms, just then, looked at the story from another point of view. They were talking low, out of hearing from the clerks. "It's a good thing for Holmes," said one, a burly, farmer-like man, who was choosing specimens of wool. "Cheap. And long credit. Just half the concern he takes." "There is a lady in the case?" suggested a young doctor, who, by virtue of having spent six months in the South, dropped his r-s, and talked of "niggahs" in a way to make a Georgian's hair stand on end. "A lady in the case?" "Of course. Only child of Herne's. HE comes down with the dust as dowry. Good thing for Holmes. 'Stonishin' how he's made his way up. If money 's what he wants in this world, he's making a long stride now to 't." The young doctor lighted his cigar, asserting that-- "Ba George, some low people did get on, re-markably! Mary Herne, now, was best catch in town." "Do you think money is what he wants?" said a quiet little man, sitting lazily on a barrel,--a clergyman, Vandyke; whom his clerical brothers shook their heads when they named, but never argued with, and bowed to with uncommon deference.