He was a great man, with an arm like a crow-bar.

He was reputed to have used it as one many a time at a house-raising.
"I've got to see him alone!" "He's in here on a charge of murder, and it's again my orders," repeated Alvin Mead, like a parrot.
"I've got to see him alone!" Alvin Mead looked at her irresolutely with his stupid light eyes; then all his great system of bone and muscle seemed to back out of the room before her.

He shut the door after him, and they heard the bolt slide.
Madelon turned to Burr.

"Tell them," she gasped out--"tell them it was--I!" Burr did not speak for a minute; he stood looking at her.

"Perhaps I am not any too much of a man," he said, slowly, at length, "but you ask me to be a good deal less of a man than I am." Madelon did not seem to hear him.