Laddie said it was a piece of bungling sure enough, but the law said a man must be "hanged by his neck until he was dead," and if he weren't dead, why, it was plain he hadn't fulfilled the requirements of the law, so they were forced to hang him again.

Father said that law was wrong; the man never should have been hanged in the first place.

They talked and argued until we were all excited about it, and the next evening after school Leon and I were helping pick apples, and when father and Laddie went to the barn with a load we sat down to rest and we thought about what they said.
"Gee, that was tough on the man!" said Leon, "but I guess the law is all right.

Of course he wouldn't want to die, and twice over at that, but I don't suppose the man he killed liked to die either.

I think if you take a life, it's all right to give your own to pay for it." "Leon," I said, "some time when you are fighting Absalom Saunders or Lou Wicks, just awful, if you hit them too hard on some tender spot and kill them, would you want to die to pay for it ?" "I wouldn't want to, but I guess I'd have to," said Leon.