It is the hardship of life, inevitable, not to be
blinked at if a man is to be a man, and do a man's part. He leaned
forward with so swift a movement that Oldham involuntarily dodged back.

"You tell your boss," said Bob, "that nothing on God's earth can keep me
out of court."

He threw away his half-smoked cigar and went back to the chair car. The
sight of Oldham was intolerable to him.

The words were said, and the decision made. In his heart he knew the
matter irrevocable. For a few moments he experienced a feeling of relief
and freedom, as when a swimmer first gets his head above the surf that
has tumbled him. These fine-spun matters of ethical balance had confused
and wearied his spirit. He had become bewildered among such varied
demands on his personal decision. It was a comfort to fall back on the
old straight rule of right conduct no matter what the consequences. The
essentials of the situation were not at all altered: Baker was guilty of
the rankest fraud; Welton was innocent of every evil intent and should
never be punished for what he had been unwillingly and doubtfully
persuaded to permit; Orde senior had acquired his lands quite according
to the customs and ideas of the time; George Pollock should have been
justified a thousand times over in sight of God and man. Those things
were to Bob's mind indisputable. To deprive the one man of a very small
portion of his fraudulently acquired property, it was apparently
necessary to punish three men who should not be punished. These men
were, furthermore, all dear to Bob personally. It did not seem right
that his decision should plunge them into undeserved penalties. But now
the situation was materially altered. Bob also stood in danger from his
action. He, too, must suffer with the others. All were in the same
boat. The menace to his own liberty justified his course. The innocent
must suffer with the guilty; but now the fact that he was one of those
who must so suffer, raised his decision from a choice to a necessity.
Whatever the consequences, the simplest, least perplexing, most
satisfying course was to follow the obvious right. The odium of
ingratitude, of lack of affection, of disloyalty, of self-reproach was
lifted from him by the very fact that he, too, was one of those who must
take consequences. In making the personal threat against the young man's
liberty, Oldham had, without knowing it, furnished to his soul the one
valid reason for going ahead, conscie