IV
THE MAN UNDERNEATH
There were many people who said that Tom Willett was a man of no account; that he was a worm, and a legal book-worm at that—a mere husk, a straw, a student, a born dweller in dusty caves in the Temple—a creature of pleas and precedents and cases, an admirer, in his very marrow, of the Dead Sea fruit of the law.
And yet—and yet there was something in Willett that made it worth while to abuse him, worth while to sharpen one's tongue on him, and worth while to dig knives into him. What it was nobody knew but myself, and I always tried in vain to make other folks see that underneath the leather and the vellum and the paper burnt a fiery spark that made Tom a man. Even in law-books there is one
81
