I could readily imagine that after these years of strife he had been
glad to embrace the peaceful calling in which I found him engaged. He
was, as I have intimated, a person of lofty demeanour, with a vein of
high seriousness. Yet he would unbend at moments as frankly as a child
and play at a simple game of chance with a pair of dice. This he was
good enough to teach to myself and gained from me quite a number of
shillings that I chanced to have. For his consort, a person of
tremendous bulk named Clarice, he showed a most chivalric
consideration, and even what I might have mistaken for timidity in one
not a confessed desperado. In truth, he rather flinched when she
interrupted our chat from the kitchen doorway by roundly calling him
"an old black liar." I saw that his must indeed be a complex nature.
From this encounter I chanced upon two lads who seemed to present the
marks of the backwoods life as I had conceived it. Strolling up a
woodland path, I discovered a tent pitched among the trees, before it
a smouldering campfire, over which a cooking-pot hung. The two lads,
of ten years or so, rushed from the tent to regard me, both attired in
shirts and leggings of deerskin profusely fringed after the manner in
which the red Indians decorate their outing or lounge-suits.
Pages:
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130