“That puts the case irrefutably,” said the young clergyman, with a challenging glance towards the one-legged man.
“You two green-horns! Money, you think, is the sole motive to pains and hazard, deception and deviltry, in this world. How much money did the devil make by gulling Eve?”
Whereupon he hobbled off again with a repetition of his intolerable jeer.
The man in gray stood silently eying his retreat a while, and then, turning to his companion, said: “A bad man, a dangerous man; a man to be put down in any Christian community.—And this was he who was the means of begetting your distrust? Ah, we should shut our ears to distrust, and keep them open only for its opposite.”
“You advance a principle, which, if I had acted upon it this morning, I should have spared myself what I now feel.—That but one man, and he with one leg, should have such ill power given him; his one sour word leavening into congenial sourness (as, to my knowledge, it did) the dispositions, before sweet enough, of a numerous company. But, as I hinted, with me at the time his ill words went for nothing; the same as now; only afterwards they had effect; and I confess, this puzzles me.”
“It should not. With humane minds, the spirit of distrust works something as certain potions do; it is a spirit which may enter such minds, and yet, for a time, longer or shorter, lie in them quiescent; but only the more deplorable its ultimate activity.”
“An uncomfortable solution; for, since that baneful man did but just now anew drop on me his bane, how shall I be sure that my present exemption from its effects will be lasting?”
“You cannot be sure, but you can strive against it.”
“How?”
“By strangling the least symptom of distrust, of any sort, which hereafter, upon whatever provocation, may arise in you.”