"clip-clip" of Nelson's shears as the old man trimmed the hedge.

"And was my father _very_ strong?" he asked with a drowsy pride.

"No, not so very." Nelson stopped clipping and was immediately lost in
the past.

"Only when he was _that_ way five strong men couldn't turn him. I'll
say that. No, if they had to get him with a shotgun that day, 'twas
nobody's fault nor sin. If Guy Bullard seen Daniel there on the sand
with an ax in his hand and foam-like on his lips, and the little ones
cornered where he caught them between cliff and water--Guy's own baby
amongst them--and knowing the sickness of the Kains as he and everybody
else did--why, I'm free and willing to say 'twas his bounden duty to
hold a true aim and pull a steady trigger on Daniel, man of his though I
was, and man of his poor father before him--

"No, I can't make it right to lay blame on any man for it, no more than
I can on them, his brother officers, that broke Maynard's neck with
their tent-pegs the night after Gettysburg. No, no--"

It was evidently a time-worn theme, an argument, an _apologia_, accepted
after years of bitterness and self-searching. He went on with the remote
serenity of age, that has escaped the toils of passion, pursuing the
old, worn path of his mind, his eyes buried in vacancy.

"No, 'twas a mercy to the both of them, father and son, and a man must
see it so. 'Twould be better of course if they could have gone easier,
same as the _old_ Maynard went, thinking himself the Lord our God to
walk on water and calm the West Indy gale. That's better, better for all