“Yes, I see you. But the outside of you doesn't tell me what I want to know.”
“It will have to speak for me.”
“Look here, I have let myself be tied up most devilishly by a train of circumstances that you started, young man. I was minding my own private business until a little while ago.”
“So was I, Mr. Converse.”
“You're a moderately humble citizen, judged from outside looks just now. How did I allow myself to be pulled in as I've been?”
The young man's smile departed. “I asked myself that question a little while ago, sir, after I was pulled in, for I am a stranger—not even a voter here.”
“Well, did you decide how it was?”
“I was led in by the hand of a helpless child—a poor little orphan girl whom I carried to the cemetery on my knees—a martyr—poisoned by that Consolidated water.”
The lawyer was stirred by the intensity of feeling which the man's tones betrayed.
“And it was borne in upon me afresh, Mr. Converse, that the philosophy of the causes by which God moves this world of ours will never be understood by man.”