"Then it will be all right."

"But do you want to fight?"

"No, I don't. I won't say you could lick me. It was partly luck
before. I won't give up that way. But you might. That doesn't
matter. I'm sorry I tried to kill you. I was crazy. You would have
been, in my place. And you won't have anything to do with Jenny again?
Oh, Harlson!"

And the two shook hands, and Harlson went back to his bed on the
clover-mow. He thought he had done a great and philosophically noble
deed--remember, this was but a boy little over twenty--and he slept
like a lamb. And next evening he went over to Woodell's home and said
he wanted some supper, and after the meal laughed at Woodell, and said
he was going off to another farm to pitch quoits until it got too dark,
and the two young men walked down the road together and exchanged some
confidences, and when they parted each was on good terms with the
other. This was strange, following an attempted murder, but such
things happen in real life. And it may be that Woodell had the worst
of the bargain in that conversation.

He was better equipped for the winning of Jenny, but the troubled man
with whom he had been talking had reached out blindly for aid in
another direction. Not much satisfaction was the result. Woodell was
of the kind who, if religious at all, believe without much reasoning,
but Harlson had repeated to him the reasoning of the Hindoo skeptic.
Woodell had at least intelligence enough to follow the line of thought,
and, in after time, when he was a family man and deacon, the lines
would recur to vex him sorely.