'You must wonder what all this may mean.

One day your father will tell you.

It has to do with a shadow which has hung over my life for many years, but that is, I trust, gone for ever.' 'If it be a man who flings it, he had best keep out of reach of this,' I said, laughing, and shaking my thick stick.
'It is a man,' she answered, 'but one to be dealt with otherwise than by blows, Thomas, should you ever chance to meet him.' 'May be, mother, but might is the best argument at the last, for the most cunning have a life to lose.' 'You are too ready to use your strength, son,' she said, smiling and kissing me.

'Remember the old Spanish proverb: "He strikes hardest who strikes last."' 'And remember the other proverb, mother: "Strike before thou art stricken,"' I answered, and went.
When I had gone some ten paces something prompted me to look back, I know not what.

My mother was standing by the open door, her stately shape framed as it were in the flowers of a white creeping shrub that grew upon the wall of the old house.