HANNAH [elderly and wise] I dont say it’s right to kill a man. In a place like this, where every man has to have a revolver, and where theres so much to try people’s tempers, the men get to be a deal too free with one another in the way of shooting. God knows it’s hard enough to have to bring a boy into the world and nurse him up to be a man only to have him brought home to you on a shutter, perhaps for nothing, or only just to shew that the man that killed him wasn’t afraid of him. But men are like children when they get a gun in their hands: theyre not content til theyve used it on somebody.