As a matter of fact, I approved of his impulse. I had felt it myself,
though not with any such wrathful bitterness. I had known for a long
time that Magnus had a tenderness toward Rowena; but he was such a
gentle fellow, and seemed to be so slow in approaching her, with his
fooling with Surajah's inventions and the like, that I set down his
feeling as a sort of sheepish drawing toward her which never would
amount to anything. But now I saw that his rage against Gowdy was of the
kind that overpowered him, stolid as he had always seemed. It rose above
mine in proportion to the passion he must have felt for her, when she
was a girl that a man could take for a wife. I pitied him; and I did not
envy Buck Gowdy, if it chanced that they should come together while
Magnus's white-hot anger was burning; but I rather hoped they would
meet. I did not believe that in any just court Magnus would be punished
if he supplied the lack in the law.
When I turned out at noon, I saw Magnus's team, and a horse hitched to a
buggy tied to my corn-crib; and when I went into the house, I half
expected to find Jim Boyd, the sheriff, there to arrest Magnus
Thorkelson for murder, at the bedside of Magnus's lady-love. I could
imagine how N. V. Creede, whom I had already resolved I would retain to
defend Magnus, would thrill the jury In his closing speech for the
prisoner as the bar.
What I found was Elder Thorndyke and grandma and the widow, all standing
by Rowena's bed.
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