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“Dost thou work much?” asked the school-master. Gerson Brandt folded his thin hands that bore the marks of toil and turned to scrutinize the stranger. “It is long since I left the world,” he added. “I know little of it as it is to-day, but I remember that it was a very busy place.”

Everett could not repress a smile.

“You speak as if the whole world were one great village, and Zanah’s only rival,” he said.

Gerson Brandt laughed, and for an instant his face was young.

“We colonists live shut up in our little valley so closely that we can hardly be called a part of the changing life of America,” he said. “Once I loved the things of the world, and even now I sometimes long for what were once my idols.”

“Your idols?”

“Once I dreamed of being a great artist,” confessed the school-master. “That was when I was a youth in Munich. There came to me a disappointment. Then it was shown to my soul that I must not fix my hopes on the things of earth. I drifted to America. The world was cruel to me. Somehow I found Zanah. My art was a help to the people of the colony. They took me in.”