“Always.”
“Well, I will make a clean breast of it and tell you just what happened.”
“I know it already, Mr. Cabot, as well as if you had told me.”
“Do you know of my resolve not to do it? Of my ineffectual resistance and the sensations I experienced?”
“I think so. I have been through it all myself.”
For a minute or two neither spoke. Amos, resting upon an elbow, his cheek against the palm of one hand, was, with the other, deceiving a very small caterpillar into useless marches from one end of a blade of grass to the other. Mr. Cabot, in a more serious tone, continued: “Can you tell me, Amos, on your honor, that as far as you know there was no attempt on your part, or on the part of any other person, to influence me upon that occasion?”
Amos tossed aside the blade of grass and sat up. “I give you my word, sir, that so far as I know there is nothing in it of that nature. I am just as helpless as you when it comes to any attempt at resistance.”
“Then how do you account for it?”
Amos had plucked a longer blade of grass, and was winding it about his fingers. “My explanation may seem childish to you, but I have no better one to offer. It is simply that certain events are destined to occur at appointed times, and that my knowing it in advance is not allowed to interfere with the natural order of things.”
“The evidence may seem to point that way, judging from my own experience, but can you believe that the whole human race are carrying out such a cut-and-dried scheme? According to that theory we are merely mechanical dummies, irresponsible and helpless, like cogs in a wheel.”