The more his mother preached a more than Puritan abstinence the more did his father expand into a more than pagan latitude; and by the time the former had come to enforcing vegetarianism, the latter had pretty well reached the point of defending cannibalism.
Being surrounded with every conceivable kind of revolt from infancy, Gabriel had to revolt into something, so he revolted into the only thing left--sanity.

But there was just enough in him of the blood of these fanatics to make even his protest for common sense a little too fierce to be sensible.

His hatred of modern lawlessness had been crowned also by an accident.

It happened that he was walking in a side street at the instant of a dynamite outrage.

He had been blind and deaf for a moment, and then seen, the smoke clearing, the broken windows and the bleeding faces.