engines were clumsy and badly finished, but the man spent his care and
labor on them until I think he loved them. His only trouble was that he
was sent to sea with second-rate oils and stores. After a while they grew
so bad that he could hardly use them; and he had reasons for believing
that a person who could dismiss or promote him was getting a big
commission on the goods. He was a plain, unreasoning man; but he would
not cripple his engines; and at last he condemned the stores and made the
skipper purchase supplies he could use, at double the usual prices, in a
foreign port. There could be only one result; he was driving a pump in a
mine when I last met him."

He paused, and added quietly:

"It wasn't logic, it wasn't even conventional morality, that impelled
these men. It was something that was part of them. What's more, men of
their type are more common than the cynics believe."

Carroll smiled good-humoredly; and when the party sauntered toward the
house, he walked beside Evelyn.

"There's one point that Wallace omitted to mention in connection with his
tales," he remarked. "The things he narrated are precisely those which,
on being given the opportunity, he would have pleasure in doing himself."

"Why pleasure? I could understand his doing them, but I'd expect him to
feel some reluctance."

Carroll's eyes twinkled.

"He gets indignant now and then. Virtuous people are generally content to