capacity because he's
failed in another."

"A bad man is a bad man," answered Baggs stoutly, "and a blackguard's a
blackguard. And if you are equal to doing one dirty trick, your fellow
man has a right to distrust you all through. You've got to look at a
question through your own spectacles, and I won't hear no nonsense about
the welfare of the Mill, because the welfare of the Mill means to
me--Levi Baggs--my welfare--and, no doubt, it means to that godless rip,
his welfare. You mark me--a man that can ruin one girl won't be very
tender about fifty girls and women. And if you think Raymond Ironsyde
will take any steps to better the workers at the expense of the master,
you're wrong, and don't know nothing about human nature."

John Best looked at Mr. Churchouse doubtfully.

"There's sense in that, I'm fearing," he said.

"When you say 'human nature,' Levi, you sum the whole situation,"
answered Ernest mildly. "Because human nature is like the sea--you never
know when you put a net into it what you'll drag up to the light of day.
Human nature is never exhausted, and it abounds in contradictions. You
cannot make hard and fast laws for it, and you cannot, if you are
philosophically inclined, presume to argue about it as though it were a
consistent and unchanging factor. History is full of examples of men
defeating their own characters, of falling away from their own ideals,
yet struggling back to them. Careers have dawned in beauty and promise
and set in blood and failure; and, again, you find people who make a bad
start, yet manage to retrieve the situation. In a word, you cannot argue
from the past to the future, where human nature is concerned. It is a
series of surprises, some gratifying and some very much the reverse.
There's always room for hope with the worst and fear with the best of
us."

"It's easy for you to talk," growled Mr. Baggs. "But talk don't take the
place of facts. I say a blackguard's always a blackguard and defy any
man to disprove it."

"If you want facts, you can have them," replied Ernest. "My researches
into history have made me sanguine in this respect. Many have been
vicious in youth and proved stout enemies to vice at a later time.
Themistocles did much evil. His father disowned him--and he drove his
mother to take her own life for grief at his sins. Yet, presently, the
ugly bud put forth a noble flower. Nicholas West was utterly wicked in
his youth and committed such crimes that he was