“Mr. Purdy, I cannot comply with your request.”

“You refuse to oblige me?”

“I refuse to defend men who I believe have committed murder.”

“I am an older man than you, Harvey Trueman, and I caution you to think twice before you refuse to obey the request of the man who has made you what you are.”  Purdy is white with rage, for he feels that Trueman will remain obdurate.

“It may seem an act of ingratitude, but I cannot suffer my conscience to be outraged by defending the perpetrators of an atrocious crime.”

“Your conscience will cost you dear.  If you do not defend this case you may consider your connection with the Paradise Coal Company at an end.  You sever all bonds that have united us, and your marriage to my daughter will be impossible.  Is the gratification of a supersensitive conscience to be bought at such a price?”

“There must be something back of your demand,” Trueman declares.

“There is only the just claim that I have on you to work for my interests.”

“Mr. Purdy, I was a man before I met you.  I am indebted to you for my present position; yet I am not willing to pay for its retention by forfeiting my honor.  If you insist on me defending the case, I tell you I would sooner pay the penalty you name.”

Trueman’s voice is tremulous.  He realizes that his decision has cost him not alone a position of great value, but all chance of wedding Ethel Purdy.

“You will live to regret this day, Harvey Trueman,” Purdy cries menacingly.  “Whatever is due you from the Paradise Coal Company will be paid you to-day.  Henceforth you will find office room elsewhere.  Remember, sir, I forbid you to have any communication with my daughter.”

With these words Purdy walks out of Trueman’s office.

“It may be better for me to get out of this damnable atmosphere while I still have a spark of manhood left,” Trueman muses, as he sits at his desk.  “If I remained here many years more I should be as heartless as Purdy himself.

“I wonder how Ethel will act in this crisis?  She loves me, that I would swear to with my life, but can she sacrifice her fortune to marry me?  I cannot expect her to do so.  No, it would be too much.  I have money enough to live but I could not support her in the style to which she has been accustomed from her birth.”

For an hour he sits intently thinking.  He reviews the past.  At the recollection of his school days and the first love he had experienced for Martha Densmore, a sigh escapes his lips.

“I might have been happy, had I married her,” he says to himself.

“But then I should not have become a lawyer.  What good have I done in the law?  I have been the buffer for a heartless corporation.  The president of the corporation demands of me to do an act that is against my manhood.  I refuse and I am turned out like a worthless old horse.

“I shall henceforth use my talents to some good.  The Paradise Coal Company and every other concern that is waxing rich at the expense of the people will find that I can be as formidable an antagonist as I have been defender.  How could I have been blind to my duty so long?”