"Well, why don't you speak? You 'fraid?" It was said with a sneer that a devil from the pit might have given.
Then Michael sat up calmly. His heart was beating steadily now and he was facing his adversary.
"No! I'm not afraid, Sam, if there were any good reason for going, but you know I never could feel comfortable in getting my living off somebody else. It doesn't seem fair to the other fellow. You see they've got a right to the things they own and I haven't; and because I might be smart enough to catch them napping and sneak away with what they prize doesn't make it right either. Now that girl probably thinks a lot of her diamonds, you see, and it doesn't seem quite the manly thing for a big strong fellow like me to get them away from her, does it? Of course you may think differently, but I believe I'd rather do some good hard work that would keep my muscles in trim, than to live off some one else. There's a kind of pretty gray moss that grows where I went to college. It floats along a little seed blown in the air first and lodges on the limb of a tree and begins to fasten itself into the bark, and grow and grow and suck life from the big tree. It doesn't seem much at first, and it seems as if the big tree might spare enough juice to the little moss. But wait a few years and see what happens. The moss grows and drapes itself in great long festoons all over that tree and by and by the first thing you know that tree has lost all its green leaves and stands up here stark and dead with nothing on its bare branches but that old gray moss which has to die too because it has nothing to live on any longer. It never learned to gather any juice for itself. They call the moss a parasite. I couldn't be a human parasite, Sam. You may feel differently about it, but I couldn't. I really couldn't."
Michael's eyes had grown dreamy and lost their fire as he remembered the dear South land, and dead sentinel pines with their waving gray festoons against the ever blue sky. As he talked he saw the whole great out-of-doors again where he had wandered now so many years free and happy; free from burdens of humanity which were pressing him now so sorely. A great longing to fly back to it all, to get away from the sorrow and the degradation and the shame which seemed pressing so hard upon him, filled his heart, leaped into his eyes, caught and fascinated the attention of the listening Sam, who understood very little of the peroration. He had never heard of a parasite. He did not know he had always been a human parasite. He was merely astonished and a trifle fascinated by the passion and appeal in Michael's face as he spoke.