“I would not have it changed, and of course no one cared to touch it. So it has hung there.”
“As I placed it ten years ago,” he said.
They both became silent for a time, and at last he said: “Marcey had no one,—Sergeant Laforce a mother.”
“It killed his mother,” she whispered, looking into the white sunlight. She was noting how it was flashed from the bark of the birch-trees near the Fort.
“His mother died,” she added again, quietly. “It killed her—the gaol for him!”
“An eye for an eye,” he responded.
“Do you think that evens John Marcey’s death?” she sighed.
“As far as Marcey’s concerned,” he answered. “Laforce has his own reckoning besides.”
“It was not a murder,” she urged.
“It was a fair fight,” he replied firmly, “and Laforce shot straight.” He was trying to think why she lived here, why the broken shutter still hung there, why the matter had settled so deeply on her. He remembered the song she was singing, the legend of the Scarlet Hunter, the fabled Savior of the North.