Now here is one that came this week. There were many and the first two or three were self-explanatory. He said, “This one, I’m not quite sure of this. My enemy goes to get an instrument to injure me, and so I hurriedly look around in his absence to find what I could use to defend myself.” He spoke of a rope, but he realized that’s not good enough for defense. He tried to find a place to put it back…but that’s not relevant to the story, because there’s only one central jet of truth in the story. So he made the first attempt, the second with the rope, and then from the present moment of time which is now, the theme shifts and it’s an ancient world. He has committed himself to the people to actually use this very, very vicious instrument against his enemy. All the spectators have gathered to watch him do it, and he’s got to go through with it because they are waiting. So he takes his enemy and ties him down, and then with an ax, a long blade of about twelve inches, he begins to put it into his back. He said, “By nature I’m a pacifist and I didn’t want to hurt him, but they were waiting for me to do what I said I would do. So I struck him and I could have in one blow severed him in two vertically, for that was the way I was hitting him. Then I realized that they were getting anxious, so I made several efforts like a practice shot and then I came down and withdrew the punch so the blade only went in three inches. Then a man came forward and looked at me and then snickered because he knew from what he saw I had pulled the punch and didn’t go right through with it to split him in two. Then the crowd began to grumble and they walked away in disgust.”427 ¶30