The same earth is beneath the high places of this life, and the lowly ones, and the law that governs 'em is the same, and--the higher the place the longer the fall, and the longer the fall the sorer the hurt." Nahum Beals sprang to his feet with a strange abandon of self-consciousness and a fiery impetus for one of his New England blood.

He had a delicate, nervous face, like a woman's, his blue eyes gleamed like blue flames under his overhang of white forehead, he shook his head as if it were maned like a lion, and, though he wore his thin, fair hair short, one could seem to see it flung back in glistening lines.

He spread his hands as if he were addressing an audience, and as he did so the parlor door opened and Jim Tenny and Eva stood there, listening.
"I tell you, sir," shouted Nahum Beals, "the time will come when you will all thank God that you belong to the poor and down-trodden of this earth, and not to the rich and great--the time will come.
There's knives to sharpen to-day, and wood for scaffolds as plenty as in the days of the French Revolution, and the hand that marks the time of day on the clock of men's patience with wrong and oppression has near gone round to the same hour and minute." Andrew Brewster looked at him, with a curious expression half of disgust, half of sympathy.

His sense of dignity in the face of adversity inherited from his New England race was shocked; he was not one to be blindly swayed by another's fervor even when his own wrongs were in question.

He would not have made a good follower in a revolution, nor a leader.