For a time Bob was unable to collect his reasoning powers adequately to confront this new fact.  His thoughts were in a whirl.  The only thing that stood out clearly was the difference in the two cases.  He knew perfectly that after Baker’s effort to lift bodily from the public domain a large block of its wealth every decent citizen should cry, “Stop thief!” Instinctively he felt, though as yet he could not analyze the reasons for so feeling, that to deprive the Wolverine Company of its holdings would work a crying injustice.  Yet, to all intents and purposes, apparently, the cases were on all fours.  Both Welton and Baker had taken advantage of a technicality.

When Bob began to think more clearly, he at first laid this difference to a personal liking, and was inclined to blame himself for letting his affections cloud his sense of justice.  Baker was companionable, jolly, but at the same time was shrewd, cold, calculating and unscrupulous in business.  He could be as hard as nails.  Welton, on the other hand, while possessing all of Baker’s admirable and robust qualities, had with them an endearing and honest bigness of purpose, limited only—­though decidedly—­by his point of view and the bounds of his practical education.  Baker would steal land without compunction; Welton would take land illegally without thought of the illegality, only because everybody else did it the same way.

But should the mere fact of personality make any difference in the enforcing of laws?  That one man was amiable and the other not so amiable had nothing to do with eternal justice.  If Bob were to fulfil his duty only against those he disliked, and in favour of his friends, he had indeed slipped back to the old days of henchman politics from which the nation was slowly struggling.  He reared his head at this thought.  Surely he was man enough to sink private affairs in the face of a stern public duty!

This determined, Bob thought the question settled.  After a few minutes, it returned as full of interrogation points as ever.  Leaving Baker and Welton entirely out of the question, the two cases still drew apart.  One was just, the other unjust.  Why?  On the answer depended the peace of Bob’s conscience.  Of course he would resign rather than be forced to prosecute Welton.  That was understood, and Bob resolutely postponed contemplation of the necessity.  He loved this life, this cause.  It opened out into wider and more beautiful vistas the further he penetrated into it.  He conceived it the only life for which he was particularly fitted by temperament and inclination.  To give it up would be to cut himself off from all that he cared for most in active life; and would be to cast him into the drudgery of new and uncongenial lines.  That sacrifice must be made.  It’s contemplation and complete realization could wait.  But a deeper necessity held Bob, the necessity of resolving the question of equities which the accident of his personal knowledge of Welton and Baker had evoked.  He had to prove his instincts right or wrong.