He was strong in himself, headstrong, strong of arm,
all-sufficient. He owed no man anything — no, nor
God.
He set his toothless gums hard, mumbling the delicacy
his quick eye had gained for him — a quick eye at eighty-
five ! — many a young fellow of twenty was not half as
fit for work as he — Pah ! A wicked look settled on his
face. He was thinking, very sluggishly, of his own long-
buried youth, of the climax, away yonder, in the noisy
seaport, the sudden end of the beginning, as he called
it, he who had now come to the slow beginnnng of the
end.
