friend of Lancy Doane, you understand, but it's only fair that the truth
be told about that quarrel, for like as not he wouldn't speak himself,
and your father was moving in and out; and, I take my oath, I wouldn't
believe Faddo and the others if they was to swear on the Bible. Not that
they didn't know the truth when they saw it, but they did love just to
let their fancy run. I'm livin' over all the things that happened that
night--livin' them over to-day, when everything's so quiet about me here,
so lonesome. I wanted to go over it all, bit by bit, and work it out in
my head, just as you and I used to do the puzzle games we played in the
sands. And maybe, when you're a long way off from things you once lived,
you can see them and understand them better. Out here, where it's so
lonely, and yet so good a place to live in, I seem to get the hang o' the
world better, and why some things are, and other things aren't; and I
thought it would pull at my heart to sit down and write you a long
letter, goin' over the whole business again; but it doesn't. I suppose I
feel as a judge does when he goes over a lot of evidence, and sums it all
up for the jury. I don't seem prejudiced one way or another. But I'm not
sure that I've got all the evidence to make me ken everything; and that's
what made me bitter wild the last time that I saw you. Maybe you hadn't
anything to tell me, and maybe you had, and maybe, if you ever write to
me out here, you'll tell me if there's anything I don't know about them
days.

"Well, I'll go back now to what happened when Faddo was speakin' at my
uncle's bar. Lancy Doane was standin' behind the settle, leanin' his arms
on it, and smokin' his pipe quiet. He waited patient till Faddo had done,
then he comes round the settle, puts his pipe up in the rack between the
rafters, and steps in front of Faddo. If ever the devil was in a man's
face, it looked out of Lancy Doane's that minute. Faddo had touched him
on the raw when he fetched out that about Tom Doane. All of a sudden