"I never have figured it out why I should have been able to think
of nothing but that clock," he said, "but so it was."
When he got home, he found his frail daughter just coming out of
the empty house, "coughing as though she was dyin'." Something,
he said, seemed to stop inside him. Those were his words:
"Something seemed to stop inside 'o me."
He turned away without saying a word, walked back to strike
headquarters, borrowed a revolver from a friend, and started out
along the main road which led into the better part of the town.
"Did you ever hear o' Robert Winter?" he asked.
"No," said I.
"Well, Robert Winter was the biggest gun of 'em all. He owned the
mills there and the largest store and the newspaper-- he pretty
nearly owned the town."
He told me much more about Robert Winter which betrayed still a
curious sort of feudal admiration for him, and for his great
place and power; but I need not dwell on it here. He told me how
he climbed through a hemlock hedge (for the stone gateway was
guarded) and walked through the snow toward the great house.
"An' all the time I seemed to be seein' my daughter Margy right
there before my eyes coughing as though she was dyin'."
It was just nightfall and all the windows were alight.
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