"That’s it," he thought then. "That’s why we have to go through all this rumpus. ’Thou therefore endure _hardness_!’ _Endure_ it! Accept it! Rub it in! That’s it, by gum!" The expletive was the strongest in which his feeble state allowed him to indulge; but he continued: "That’s what’s the matter with me. I’m not hard. I’m soft. I’m soft inside. In my mind, in my heart, I’m like putty, like dough. It isn’t that I’m tender; I’m just _soft_. If I’ve ever had to bear anything hard, I’ve kicked like the dickens; and that’s why I’m such an ass now. ’Thou therefore endure _hardness_!’ I’ll be hanged if I won’t try." So the trying came to be a kind of religion—not a very vital religion, or one as to which he was very keen, and yet a religion. During the winter he was seeing Jennie, and the spring he married her, and the summer he spent in South America, he had fumbled with it without getting hold of it. Not till he began his strivings with Teddy, and his efforts to divert the minds of Teddy’s family, did it grow sharply defined to his vision as a way of life. Perhaps it was Teddy who taught him. Perhaps they mutually taught each other. He couldn’t tell. He only became aware that something was working in the boy like the might of spirit in the inner man. Possibly Teddy was learning more quickly than himself because his lessons were more intensive. He noticed this first on the day when he went, at the lawyer’s suggestion, to back up the argument that to plead guilty was the only hope. "I’ve done all I can with him," Stenhouse declared. "Now it’s up to you. He thinks you’re God; and so you may have some influence." "But I never will," Teddy answered, coolly. "I’d never have done society—as the chaplain calls it—any harm if society hadn’t done me harm to begin with. I may be guilty in the second place, but society is guilty in the first, and no one will make me say anything different from that." "That’s all very well, Teddy; but society won’t accept the plea." "Then it can do the other thing." Bob’s tone became significant. "And you realize what—what the other thing might be?" "You bet I do! You can’t live in Murderers’ Row without having _that_ rubbed into you." They talked softly, in a corner of the visitors’ room, because other little groups were scattered about, each centering round some sullen, swarthy man, wreathed in mystery and darkness. "That’s all right, old chap," Bob agreed; "but you see, don’t you, that it’s only a stand for an idea?" "It’s a stand for telling the truth, isn’t it?" "The truth—as you see it?" "The truth as it is—as I’m willing to bank on it." "Banking on it in a way that—that may call for a great deal of pluck." "Well, I’ve got a great deal of pluck." "Yes—if you’ve got enough. It’s one thing to say so now, and another to prove it when the time comes." In his suppressed vehemence Teddy grasped Bob’s wrist, as the hands of both lay on the small table above which their heads came together.