“I shall be glad,” replied Cary, “to hear what you have to say on the subject.  Come! here are blank sheets and a new quill and an attentive secretary!”

Rand smiled.  “It’s the strangest post for you!—­but all life’s a dream just now.  I confess that writing is uphill work!  Well—­since you are so good.”

He began to dictate.  At first his words came slowly, with some stiffness and self-consciousness.  This passed; he forgot himself, thought only of his subject, and utterance became quiet, grave, and fluent.  He did not speak as though he were addressing a jury.  Gesture was impossible, and his voice must not carry beyond the blue room.  He spoke as to himself, as giving reasons to a high intelligence for the invalidity of murder.  For an infusion of sentiment and rhetoric he knew he might trust Mocket’s unaided powers, but the basis of the matter he would furnish.  He spoke of murder as the check the savage gives to social order, as the costliest error, the last injustice, the monstrousness beyond the brute, the debt without surety, the destruction by a fool of that which he knows not how to create.  He spoke for society, without animus and without sentiment; in a level voice marshalling fact and example, and moving unfalteringly toward the doom of the transgressor.  Turning to the case in hand, he wove strand by strand a rope for the guilty wretch in question; then laid it for the nonce aside and spoke of murder more deeply with a sombre force and a red glow of imagery.  Then followed three minutes of slow words which laid the finished and tested rope in the sheriff’s hand.  Rand’s voice ceased, and he lay staring at the poplar leaves without the window.

Cary laid the pen softly down, sat still and upright in his chair for a minute, then leaned back with a long breath.  “The poor wretch!” he said.

“Poor enough,” assented Rand abruptly.  “But Nature does not, and Society must not, think of that.  As he brewed, so let him drink, and the measure that he meted, let it be meted to him again.  There is on earth no place for him.”  He fell silent again, his eyes upon the dancing leaves.

“You will make your mark,” said Cary slowly.  “This is more than able work.  You have before you a great future.”

Rand looked at him half eagerly, half wistfully.  “Do you really think that?”

“I cannot think otherwise,” Cary answered.  “I saw it plainly in the courtroom the other day.”  He smiled.  “I deplore your political principles, Mr. Rand, but I rejoice that my conqueror is no lesser man.  I must to work against the next time we encounter.”

“You have been long out of the county,” said Rand.  “I had the start of you, that is all.  You were trained to the law.  Will you practise it, or will Greenwood take all your time?”