“No; I see now,” March assented, though he thought, his position still justified.  “I wish—­”

“I don’t know as I understand much about his opinions, anyway; but I ain’t ready to say I want the men dependent on me to manage my business for me.  I always tried to do the square thing by my hands; and in that particular case out there I took on all the old hands just as fast as they left their Union.  As for the game I came on them, it was dog eat dog, anyway.”

March could have laughed to think how far this old man was from even conceiving of Lindau’s point’of view, and how he was saying the worst of himself that Lindau could have said of him.  No one could have characterized the kind of thing he had done more severely than he when he called it dog eat dog.

“There’s a great deal to be said on both sides,” March began, hoping to lead up through this generality to the fact of Lindau’s death; but the old man went on: 

“Well, all I wanted him to know is that I wasn’t trying to punish him for what he said about things in general.  You naturally got that idea, I reckon; but I always went in for lettin’ people say what they please and think what they please; it’s the only way in a free country.”

“I’m afraid, Mr. Dryfoos, that it would make little difference to Lindau now—­”

“I don’t suppose he bears malice for it,” said Dryfoos, “but what I want to do is to have him told so.  He could understand just why I didn’t want to be called hard names, and yet I didn’t object to his thinkin’ whatever he pleased.  I’d like him to know—­”

“No one can speak to him, no one can tell him,” March began again, but again Dryfoos prevented him from going on.

“I understand it’s a delicate thing; and I’m not askin’ you to do it.  What I would really like to do—­if you think he could be prepared for it, some way, and could stand it—­would be to go to him myself, and tell him just what the trouble was.  I’m in hopes, if I done that, he could see how I felt about it.”

A picture of Dryfoos going to the dead Lindau with his vain regrets presented itself to March, and he tried once more to make the old man understand.  “Mr. Dryfoos,” he said, “Lindau is past all that forever,” and he felt the ghastly comedy of it when Dryfoos continued, without heeding him.

“I got a particular reason why I want him to believe it wasn’t his ideas I objected to—­them ideas of his about the government carryin’ everything on and givin’ work.  I don’t understand ’em exactly, but I found a writin’—­among—­my son’s-things” (he seemed to force the words through his teeth), “and I reckon he—­thought—­that way.  Kind of a diary—­where he—­put down—­his thoughts.  My son and me—­we differed about a good-many things.”  His chin shook, and from time to time he stopped.  “I wasn’t very good to him, I reckon; I crossed him where I guess I got no business to cross him; but I thought everything of—­Coonrod.