“I’ll go, Miss Broughton,” Caleb said, though in his heart he dreaded it; he had a proud man’s aversion to meeting discourtesy from those who despised his poverty, and he had observed the red when it stained Kitty’s cheek. But, after all, it was a small matter, he reflected; to one of Caleb’s habits of thought the social part of life was a small matter. Yet it is the small things which prick until the blood comes. VII A WEEK from that day Caleb Trench addressed a crowd of backwoodsmen and some of the Eshcol farmers at the town hall at Cresset’s Corners. Even if a reporter had not been there, it would have passed by word of mouth all over the county, and, later, through the State. There are moments when the eloquence of man consists in telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. The fact that the countrymen had not heard it for nearly fifteen years clothed it with spell-binding powers. For half an hour Caleb Trench talked to them with extraordinary simplicity and directness; when he had finished they knew how they were governed and why. He had the power of making his argument clear to the humblest, and yet convincing to the most learned, which is the power that men call persuasion. In that half-hour they found that they had raised up the Golden Calf themselves, and that it had smitten them. Jacob Eaton suddenly appeared like a huge spider whose golden web had immeshed the entire State, while they themselves were hung in it like wounded flies. Yet, yesterday, Jacob Eaton had been a young man of fine family and immense influence. That night they went home disputing and lay awake, in the agonies of reflection, trying to find a way to withdraw themselves from his investments; that they could not find it involved them in still deeper distress. All this while, the figure of Caleb Trench began to stand out sharply and suddenly, like the silhouette thrown on the sheet by the lamp of the stereopticon. He made no effort to keep himself before them; having told them the truth, he acted as if he had performed his mission and went about his own business, which was chiefly, just then, keeping shop and reading law only at night. The summer trade was on, the roads were good, and customers more plentiful than clients.