“Sharp and I had been enemies for a long time. It started back before the war, when he wanted to marry your mother. We both enlisted in the same regiment, and somehow the trouble kept alive. He was a bit of a bully, and I was counted a handy man with my fists, too. The regiment was always trying to get us into the ring together, but we knew it was dangerous. We had sense enough for that. I won't say he would have done it, but I never felt safe when there was a fight on in all those four years. It's easy enough to shoot the man in front of you and no one be the wiser. Many a score's been settled that way. When we got home again we didn't get along any better. He was a drinking man, and had no control over himself when liquor got the best of him. I did my share in keeping the feud alive. What he said of me and what I said of him generally reached both of us in time, as you can fancy. “At last, when I joined the church, I concluded it wasn't right to hate a man the way I hated Sharp, for, you see, he'd never really done anything to me. “One day I stopped in at the smithy--he was a blacksmith--to have a talk with him and see if we couldn't patch it up somehow and be friends. It was a Saturday afternoon, and he'd been drinking more than was good for him. “I hadn't hardly got the first words out when he came at me with a big sledge in his hand, all in a rage, and swearing he'd have my life. I pushed him off and started for the door. I saw it was no use to try to reason with him, but he came at me again, and this time he struck me with his sledge. It did no harm, though it hurt, and I pushed him out of my way and backed off towards the door. The lock was caught, and before I could open it, he was within striking distance again, and I had to turn to defend myself. I snatched up a bar of iron perhaps a foot long. I had kept my temper down until then, but the moment I had a weapon in my hand it got clean away from me, and in an instant I was fighting--just as he was fighting--to kill.” Roger Oakley had told the story of the murder in a hard, emotionless voice, but Dan saw in the half-light that his face was pale and drawn. Dan found it difficult to associate the thought of violence with the man at his side, whose whole manner spoke of an unusual restraint and control. That he had killed a man, even in self-defence, seemed preposterous and inconceivable. There was a part of the story Roger Oakley could not tell, and which his son had no desire to hear.