business since he give up goin' to sea. He--"

"Sshh! Shh!" interrupted Mr. Hamilton, mildly, "don't talk that way,
Shadrach. Don't find fault with the dead."

"Find fault! I ain't findin' fault. I thought as much of Marcellus Hall
as any man on earth, and nobody feels worse about his bein' took than
I do. But I'm just sayin' what we both know's a fact. He didn't want to
see us; he didn't want to see nobody. Since his wife died he lived alone
in that house, except for a housekeeper and that stepchild, and never
went anywhere or had anybody come to see him if he could help it. A
reg'lar hermit--that's what he was, a hermit, like Peleg Myrick down
to Setuckit P'int. And when I think what he used to be, smart, lively,
able, one of the best skippers and smartest business men afloat or
ashore, it don't seem possible a body could change so. 'Twas that woman
that done it, that woman that trapped him into gettin' married."

"Sshh! Shh! Shadrach; she's dead, too. And, besides, I guess she was a
real good woman; everybody said she was."

"I ain't sayin' she wasn't, am I? What I say is she hadn't no business
marryin' a man twenty years older'n she was."

"But," mildly, "you said she trapped him. Now we don't know--"

"Zoeth Hamilton, you know she must have trapped him. You and I agreed
that was just what she done. If she hadn't trapped him--set a reg'lar
seine for him and hauled him aboard like a school of mackerel--'tain't
likely he'd have married her or anybody else, is it? I ain't married
nobody, have I? And Marcellus was years older'n I be."