Mrs. Cutter remained flushed and wild-eyed as we had known her, but as the
years passed she became afflicted with a shaking palsy which made her
nervous nod continuous instead of occasional. Her hands were so uncertain
that she could no longer disfigure china, poor woman! As the couple grew
older, they quarreled more and more about the ultimate disposition of
their "property." A new law was passed in the State, securing the
surviving wife a third of her husband's estate under all conditions.
Cutter was tormented by the fear that Mrs. Cutter would live longer than
he, and that eventually her "people," whom he had always hated so
violently, would inherit. Their quarrels on this subject passed the
boundary of the close-growing cedars, and were heard in the street by
whoever wished to loiter and listen.
One morning, two years ago, Cutter went into the hardware store and bought
a pistol, saying he was going to shoot a dog, and adding that he "thought
he would take a shot at an old cat while he was about it." (Here the
children interrupted Rudolph's narrative by smothered giggles.)
Cutter went out behind the hardware store, put up a target, practiced for
an hour or so, and then went home. At six o'clock that evening, when
several men were passing the Cutter house on their way home to supper,
they heard a pistol shot. They paused and were looking doubtfully at one
another, when another shot came crashing through an upstairs window.
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