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
Lancy swings, and looks at the clock.
"'It's half-past ten, Jim Faddo,' said he, 'and aw've got an hour an' a
half to deal wi' you as a Lincolnshire lad.
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