On the next day the professor was brought into contact with Colonel West and Oliver Jupp, Mr. Lake having arranged a meeting at his own house. One or two friends were also present. The subject was entered upon, and the professor's opinion given. Oliver Jupp believed he might be right; the colonel was simply astonished at the assertion. "Not know colours!" cried he. "Not able to tell white from black! Why, what have our eyes been about all our lives, Mr. Professor? My sight is keen and clear; I can answer for that; and I've not heard that there's anything amiss with Mr. Oliver Jupp's." "It has nothing whatever to do with a keen sight--in the way you are thinking of," returned Dr. Macpherson. "Nay, it frequently happens that those who are afflicted with colour-blindness possess a remarkably good and clear sight. The defect is not in the vision: it lies in the absence of the organ of colour." "That's logic," laughed the colonel, who had never heard of such a theory, and did not believe many others had. "Look here," said the professor, endeavouring to put the case in an understandable light "You will allow that men are differently endowed. One man will have the gift of calculation in an eminent degree; he will go through a whole ledger swimmingly, while his friend by his side is labouring at a single column of it: another will possess the organ of music so largely that he will probably make you a second Mozart; but his own brother can't tell one tune from another, and could not learn to play if his very life depended on it: this man will draw you, untaught, plans and buildings of wondrous and beautiful design; that one, who has served his stupid apprenticeship to the art, cannot accomplish a pigsty fit for a civilized pig to live in--and so I might go on, illustrating examples all. Am I right or wrong?" he concluded, turning his spectacles full on his attentive listeners. "Right," they all said, including Colonel West. "Very well," resumed the professor. "Then I would ask you, gentlemen, why should colour be an exception? I mean the capability of perceiving it; the faculty of distinguishing one shade from another?" There was no immediate answer. The professor went on. "This brain is totally deficient in the organ of tune; that one is deficient in some other faculty; a third in something else: why should not the organ of colour sometimes fail?" "I thought everybody possessed the organ of colour," observed Mr. Lake. "The greater portion of people do possess it; but there are many who do not." Colonel West, unconvinced, was rather amused than otherwise. "And you think, sir, that I and Mr. Oliver Jupp do not possess it," he said, laughing.