him. And this one good thing must be allowed of Adam M'Adam:

that, if there was only one woman of whom he was ever known to
speak well, there was also only one, in the whole course of his life,
against whom he ever insinuated evil--and that was years
afterward, when men said his brain was sapped. Flouts and jeers he
had for every man, but a woman, good or bad, was sacred to him.
For the sex that had given him his mother and his wife he had that
sentiment of tender reverence which, if a man still preserve, he
cannot be altogether bad. As he turned into the house he looked
back at Red Wull.

"Ay, we may leave him," he said. "That is, gin ye're no afraid, Mr.
Thornton?"

Of what happened while the men were within doors, it is enough
to tell two things. First, that Owd Bob was no bully. Second, this:
In the code of sheep-dog honor there is written a word in stark
black letters; and opposite it another word, writ large in the color
of blood. The first is "Sheep-murder"; the second, "Death." It is the
one crime only to be wiped away in blood; and to accuse of the
crime is to offer the one unpardonable insult. Every sheep-dog
knows it, and every shepherd.

That afternoon, as the men still talked, the quiet echoes of the farm
rung with a furious animal cry, twice repeated: "Shot for
sheepmurder"--" Shot for sheep-murder"; followed by a hollow
stillness.

The two men finished their colloquy. The matter was concluded