He read his Bible, but that only puzzled him the more, because there seemed to him, of necessity, degrees of wrong, and he could not find a commandment which was flexible.

He chafed because there was no measure for his sentence.
A pebble at the rivulet's head will turn the tiny current either way, and so change the course of eventual creek and river.

The pebble fell near the source in Grant Harlson's case, for never before in his life had he studied much the moral problem.

His had been the conventional training, which is to-day the training which asks one to accept, unreasoning, the belief of yielding predecessors, and, until he felt the prick of conscience, he had never cared to question the inheritance.

Now he wanted proof.