Had the battle been with the simple abstraction of philosophic doubt, the good might have prevailed, but there obtruded itself into the field the concrete form of the gypsy.  The glance of her lustrous eye, the gleam of her milk-white teeth, the heaving of her agitated bosom, the inscrutable but suggestive expression of her flushed and eager face, these were foes against which he struggled in vain.  A feverish desire, whose true significance he did not altogether understand, tugged at his heart, and he felt himself drawn by unseen hands toward this mysterious and beautiful being.  She seemed to him at that awful moment, when his whole world of thought and feeling was slipping from under his feet, the one only abiding reality.  She at least was not an impalpable vision, but solid, substantial, palpitating flesh and blood.  Like continuously advancing waves which sooner or later must undermine a dyke, the passions and suspicions of his newly awakened nature were sapping the foundations of his belief.

At intervals he gained a little courage to withstand them, and at such moments tried to pray; but the effort was futile, for neither would the accustomed syllables of petition spring to his lips, nor the feelings of faith and devotion arise within his heart.  He strove to convince himself that this experience was a trial of his faith, and that if he stood out a little longer, his doubt would pass away.  He lifted his head and glanced at the serpent still coiled upon the hearth.  Its eyes were fixed upon him in a gorgon-like stare, and his doubts became positive certainties, as disgust became loathing.  The battle had ended.  The mystic had been defeated.  This sudden collapse had come because the foundations of his faith had been honeycombed.  The innocent serpent had been, not the cause, but the occasion.

Influences had been at work, of which the Quaker had remained unconscious.  He had been observing, without reflecting upon, many facts in the lives of other men, experiences in his own heart, and apparent inconsistencies in the Bible.  There was also a virus whose existence he did not suspect running in his very blood!  And now on top of the rest came the bold skepticism of the quack, and the bewildering beauty of the gypsy.

Yes, the preliminary work had been done!  We never know how rotten the tree is until it falls, nor how unstable the wall until it crumbles.  And so in the moral natures of men, subtle forces eat their way silently and imperceptibly to the very center.

A summer breeze overthrows the tree, the foot of a child sets the wall tottering; a whisper, a smile, even the sight of a serpent, is the jar that upsets the equilibrium of a soul.

The Quaker rose from his seat in a fever of excitement.  He seized the Bible lying open on the table, hurled it frantically at the snake and flung himself out of the open door into the sunshine.  A wild consciousness of liberty surged over him.