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Kelsey trudged on with his slide and his oxen, elated by his moral triumph. He glorified himself for his meekness. He joyed, with all the turbulent impulses of victory, in the blacksmith's discomfiture.
Yet he was cognizant of his own deeper, subtler springs of action. There was that within him which forbade him to take the life of an unarmed man, but he piqued himself that he forbore. He had withheld even the return of the blow. But he knew that in refraining he had struck deeper still. He dwelt upon the scene with the satisfaction of an inventor. He, too, could foresee the consequences: the blood-curdling eloquence; the port and pose of a martyr; the far-spread distrust of the blacksmith's professions of piety, under which that doughty religionist already quaked.