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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Virginian by Owen Wister: Public Opinion relaxed into that comfort which we all experience
when the sermon ends, Trampas sat down amid the reviving
cheerfulness, and ventured again to be facetious.
"Shut your rank mouth," said Wiggin to him, amiably. "I don't
care whether he knows her or if he done it on principle. I'll
accept the roundin' up he gave us--and say! You'll swallo' your
dose, too! Us boys'll stand in with him in this."
So Trampas swallowed. And what of the Virginian?
He had championed the feeble, and spoken honorably in meeting,
and according to all the constitutions and by-laws of morality,
he should have been walking in virtue's especial calm. But there
The Virginian | 
