It would appear that Eve's second son had some good in him. Of course, the fact that Abel's sacrifice was found acceptable to God would not, in the "faith alone" Christian formulation, mean necessarily that Abel had done anything laudable, or acted out of seemly intent. It is only conjecture that might (attempt to) tell us why Abel's sacrifice was found acceptable.
Maybe Abel didn't have any good in him. Maybe Cain and Abel were both totally depraved. We only know that Cain was downcast after his sacrifice was not accepted. God tells Cain that his negative attitude is an invitation to sin. Cain, in a place in history before the provision of punishment for killing human beings was declared to Noah, does a logical (though, we might imagine, ineffectual) thing to address his own negative attitude: Cain kills the brother whose sacrifice was accepted by God, removing--for Cain--that which was emblematic of his own failing.
Cain is then punished by God with the threat--unrealized, it must be noted--of reducing Cain to "a fugitive and a vagabond." To this Cain responds:
"Behold, thou hast driven me out this day from the face of the earth; and from thy face shall I be hid; and I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth; and it shall come to pass, that every one that findeth me shall slay me" (Genesis 4:14, KJV).
If God had established by then what he definitely established later (the death penalty for murder) then the situation in the immediately above quote would have been a quite satisfactory one. It would appear, however, that Cain being put to death for murder would not have been a necessary goal for those whom he feared. Apparently merely being "a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth" was enough to get someone killed, and little wonder. This was (or rapidly was becoming) the age in which "the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually" (6:5).
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