He returned looking very pale and disturbed, and with
some difficulty was persuaded (you know how he disliked speaking of
himself) to tell what had happened. It seems that, somewhere on the
lonely road, he came across two men, honest-looking country folk,
engaged in a violent quarrel; their language made it clear that one
accused the other of some sort of slander, a very trivial affair.
Just as my father came up to them, they began fighting. He
interfered, tried to separate them--as he would have done, I am
sure, had they been armed with pistols, for the sight of fighting
was intolerable to him, it put him beside himself with a sort of
passionate disgust. They were great strong fellows, and one of them,
whether intentionally or not, dealt him a fierce blow on the chest,
knocking him down. That put an end to the fight. My father had to
sit by the roadside for a time before he could go home.
"The next day he did not look well, but spent his time as usual, and
on the morning after, he seemed to be all right again. The next day
again he went for his walk, and did not return. When his absence
became alarming, messengers were sent to look for him, and by one of
these he was found lying on the moorside, dead. The postmortem
showed that the blow he had received affected the heart, which was
already diseased (he did not know that). Of course the man who
struck him cannot be discovered, and I don't know that it matters.
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