ell, sir, that's a thing that's always
puzzled me. If it wa'n't that it was Jackson workin' plantchette that
night, I shouldn't placed much dependence on what she said; but Jackson
could get the truth out of her, if anybody could. Sence I b'en up there I
b'en figurin' it out like this: the broken shaft is the old Jeff that
he's left off bein'--"

Whitwell stopped midway in his suggestion, with an inquiring eye on the
painter, who asked: "You think he's left off being the old Jeff?"

"Well, sir, you got me there," the philosopher confessed. "I didn't see
anything to the contrary, but come to think of it--"

"Why couldn't the broken shaft be his unfulfilled destiny on the old
lines? What reason is there to believe he isn't what he's always been?"

"Well, come to think of it--"

"People don't change in a day, or a year," Westover went on, "or two or
three years, even. Sometimes I doubt if they ever change."

"Well, all that I thought," Whitwell urged, faintly, against the hard
scepticism of a man ordinarily so yielding, "is 't there must be a moral
government of the universe somewheres, and if a bad feller is to get
along and prosper hand over hand, that way, don't it look kind of as
if--"

"There wasn't any moral government of the universe? Not the way I see
it," said Westover. "A tree brings forth of its kind. As a man sows he
reaps. It's dead sure, pitilessly sure. Jeff Durgin sowed success, in a
certain way, and he's reaping it. He once said to me, when I tried to
waken his conscience, that he should get where he was trying to go if he
was strong enough, and being good had nothing to do with it. I believe
now he was right. But he was wrong too, as such a man always is. That
kind of tree bears Dead Sea apples, after all. He sowed evil, and he must
reap evil. He may never know it, but he will reap what he has sown. The
dreadful thing is that others must share in his harvest. What do you
think?"

Whitwell scratched his head. "Well, sir, there's something in what you
say, I guess. But here! What's the use of thinkin' a man can't change?
Wa'n't there ever anything in that old idee of a change of heart? What do
you s'pose made Jeff let up on that feller that Jombateeste see him have
down, that day, in my Clearin'? What Jeff would natch'ly done would b'en
to shake the life out of him; but he didn't; he let him up, and he let
him go. What's the reason that wa'n't the beginnin' of a new life for
him?"

"We don't know