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Part two of Amy Foster by Joseph Conrad. This LibriVox
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recording is in the public domain. Reading by Bologna Times,
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Amy Foster by Joseph Conrad, Section two. He must have
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been a real adventurer at heart, for how many of
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the greatest enterprises in the conquest of the earth had
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for their beginning just such a bargaining away of the
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paternal cow for the mirage or true gold far away.
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I have been telling you, more or less in my
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own words, what I learned fragmentarily in the course of
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two or three years, during which I seldom missed an
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opportunity of a friendly chat with him. He told me
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the story of his adventure, with many flashes of white
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teeth and lively glances of black eyes, at first in
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a sort of anxious baby talk, then as he acquired
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the language with great flot tullency, but always with that singing,
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soft and at the same time vibrating intonation that instilled
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a strangely penetrating power into the sound of the most
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familiar English words, as if they had been the words
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of an unearthly language. And he always would come to
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an end with many emphatic shakes of his head upon
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that awful sensation of his heart melting within him. Directly
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he set foot on board that ship. Afterwards there seemed
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to come for him a period of blank ignorance. At
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any rate as to facts, no doubt he must have
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been abominably sea sick, and abominably unhappy, this soft and
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passionate adventurer, taken thus out of his knowledge, and feeling
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bitterly as he lay in his emigrant bunk his utter loneliness,
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for his was a highly sensitive nature. The next thing
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we know of him for certain is that he had
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been hiding in Hammond's pig Pound, by the side of
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the road to Norton, six miles as the crow flies
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from the sea. Of these experiences, he was unwilling to speak.
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They seemed to have seared into his soul a somber
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sort of wonder and indignation. Through the rumors of the countryside,
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which lasted for a good many days after his arrival,
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we know that the fishermen of West Colebrook had been
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disturbed and startled by heavy knocks against the walls of
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weatherboard cottages and by a voice crying piercingly strange words
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in the night several of them had turned out even
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but no doubt he had fled in sudden alarm at
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their rough, angry tones handling each other in the darkness.
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A sort of frenzy must have helped him up the
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steep Norton Hill. It was he, no doubt, who, early
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the following morning, had been seen lying in a swoon,
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I should say, on the roadside grass by the Brinsit carrier,
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who actually got down to have a nearer look, but
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drew back, intimidated by the perfect immobility, and by something
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queer in the aspect of that tramp sleeping so still
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under the showers. As the day advanced, some children came
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dashing into school at Norton in such a fright that
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the schoolmistress went out and spoke indignantly to a horrid
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looking man on the road. He edged away, hanging his
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head for a few steps, and then suddenly ran off
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with extraordinary fleetness. The driver of mister Bradley's moat cart
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made no secret of it that he had lashed with
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his whip at a hairy sort of gypsy fellow, who,
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jumping up at a turn of the road by the vnce,
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made a snatch at the pony's bridle, and he caught
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him a good one too, right over the face. He
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said that made him drop down in the mud a
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jolly sight, quicker than he had jumped up. But it
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was a good half a mile before he could stop
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the pony. Maybe that, in his desperate endeavors to get help,
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and in his need to get in touch with someone,
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the poor devil had tried to stop the cart. Also,
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three boys confessed afterwards to thrung stones at a funny
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tramp knocking about, all wet and muddy, and it seemed
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very drunk in the narrow deep lane by the limbcounts.
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All this was the talk of three villages
Load full transcript
for days.
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But we have missus Finn's, the wife of Smith's wagoner,
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unimpeachable testimony that she saw him get over the low
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wall of Hammond's pig Pound and lurch straight at her,
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babbling aloud in a voice that was enough to make
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one die of fright. Having the baby with her in
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a perambulator, missus Finn called out to him to go away,
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and as he persisted in coming nearer, she hit him
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courageous with her umbrella over the head, and without once
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looking back, ran like the wind with a perambulator, as
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far as the first house in the village. She stopped then,
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out of breath, and spoke to Old Lewis, hammering there
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at a heap of stones, and the old chap, taking
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off his immense black wire goggles, got up on his
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shaky legs to look where she pointed. Together they followed
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with their eyes the figure of the man running over
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a field. They saw him fall down, pick himself up,
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and run on again, staggering and waving his long arms
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above his head, in the direction of the new Barnes Farm.
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From that moment he is plainly in the tolls of
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his obscure and touching destiny. There is no doubt after
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this of what happened to him. All is certain now
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Missus Smith's intense terror, amy Foster's stolid conviction held against
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the other's nervous attack that the man meant no harm.
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Smith's exhausted aspiration, on his return from Darnford Market at
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finding the dog barking himself into a fit the back door,
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locked his wife in hysterics, and all for an unfortunate
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dirty tramp supposed to be even then lurking in his
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stackyard was he, he would teach him to frighten women.
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Smith is notoriously hot tempered, But the sight of some
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nondescript and miry creature sitting cross legged amongst a lot
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of loose straw, and swinging itself to and fro like
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a bear in a cage made him pause. Then this
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tramp stood up silently before him, one mass of mud
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and filth from head to foot. Smith, alone amongst his stacks,
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with this apparition, in the stormy twilight ringing with the
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infuriated barking of the dog, felt the dread of an
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inexplicable strangeness. But when that being parting with his black hands,
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the long matted locks that hung before his face as
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who parted the two hovels of a curtain, looked out
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at him with glistening wild black and white eyes, the
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weirdness of this silent encounter fairly staggered him. He had admitted, since,
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for the story has been a legitimate subject of conversation
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about here for years, that he made more than one
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step backwards. Then a sudden burst of rapid, senseless speech
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persuaded him at once that he had to do with
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an escaped lunatic in fact, that impression never wore off completely.
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Smith has not in his heart given up his secret
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conviction of the man's essential insanity to this very day.
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As the creature approached him, jabbering in a most discomposing manner, Smith,
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unaware that he was being addressed as gracious Lord and
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adjured in God's name to afford food and shelter, kept
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on speaking firmly but gently to it, and retreating all
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the time into the other yard. At last, watching his chance,
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by a sudden charge, he bundled him headlong into the
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wood lodge and instantly shot the bolt. Thereupon he wiped
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his brow. Though the day was cold, he had done
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his duty to the community by shutting up a wandering
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and probably dangerous maniac. Smith isn't a hard man at all,
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but he had room in his brain only for that
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one idea of lunacy. He was not imaginative enough to
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ask himself whether the man might not be perishing with
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cold and hunger. Meantime, at first the maniac made a
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great deal of noise in the lodge. Missus Smith was
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screaming upstairs, where she had locked herself in her bedroom.
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But Amy Foster sobbed piteously at the kitchen door, wringing
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her hands and muttering don't, don't. I dare say Smith
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had a rough
time of it that evening, with one
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noise and another, and this insane, disturbing voice crying obstinately
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through the door only added to his irritation. He couldn't
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possibly have connected this troublesome lunatic with the sinking of
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a ship in East Bay, of which there had been
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a rumor in the Darnford market place. And I dare
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say the man inside had been very near to insanity
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on that night, before his excitement collapsed and he became unconscious.
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He was throwing himself violently about in the dark, rolling
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on some dirty sacks, and biting his fists with rage, cold, hunger,
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amazement and despair. He was a mountaineer of the Eastern
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Range of the Carpathians, and the vessel sunk the night
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before in East Bay was the Hamburg immigrants ship, Herzogen
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Sophia Dorothea of appalling memory. A few months later we
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could read in the papers the accounts of the bogus
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emigration agencies among the Sclavonian peasantry in the more remote
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provinces of Austria. The object of these scoundrels was to
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get hold of the poor, ignorant people's homesteads, and they
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were in league with the local usurers. They exported their
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victims through Hamburg. Mostly as to the ship, I had
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watched her out of this very window, reaching close, hauled
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under short canvas into the bay on a dark, threatening afternoon,
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she came to an anchor correctly by the chart, off
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the Brunswick Coastguard station. I remembered before the night fell,
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looking out again at the outlines of her spars and
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rigging that stood out dark and pointed on a background
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of ragged, slady clouds like another and a slighter spire
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to the left of the Brenswick Church tower. In the evening,
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the wind rose. At midnight I could hear in my
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bed the terrific gusts and the sounds of a driving deluge.
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About that time the coast guard men thought they saw
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the lights of a steamer over the anchoring ground. In
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a moment they vanished, But it is clear that another
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vessel of some sort had tried for shelter in the
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bay on that awful blind night, had rammed the German
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ship amidships a breach, as one of the divers told
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me afterwards, that she could sail a Thames barged through
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and then had gone out either scatheless or damaged, who
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shall say, but had gone out unknown, unseen, and fatal
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to perish mysteriously at sea. Of her nothing ever came
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to light, and yet the hue and cry that was
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raised all over the world would have found her out
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if she had been in existence anywhere on the face
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of the waters. A completeless without a clew, and a
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stealthy silence as of a neatly executed crime characterized this
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murderous disaster, which, as you may remember, had its grisome celebrity.
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The wind would have prevented the loudest outcries from reaching
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the shore. There had been evidently no time for signals
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of distress. It was death without any sort of fuss.
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The Hamburg ship filling all at once, capsized as she sank,
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and at daylight there was not even the end of
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a spar to be seen above water. She was missed,
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of course, and at first the coast guardmen surmised that
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she had either dragged her anchor or parted her cable
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some time during the night and had been blown out
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to sea. Then after the tide turned, the wreck must
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have shifted a little and released some of the bodies,
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because a child, a little fair haired child in a
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red frock, came ashore abreast of the Martello tower. By
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the afternoon you could see along three miles of beach
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dark figures with bare legs dashing in and out of
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the tumbling foam, and rough looking men, women with hard faces. Children,
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mostly fair haired, were being carried stiff and dripping on stretchers,
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on wattles, on ladders in a long procession past the
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door of the ship inn, to be laid out in
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a row under the north wall of the Brinsitt Church. Officially,
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the body of the little
girl in the red frock
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is the first thing that came ashore from that ship.
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But I have patience amongst the seafaring population of West Colebrook,
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and unofficially I am informed that very early that morning
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two brothers who went down to look after their cobble
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hauled up on the beach, found a good way from
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brenst and ordinary ship's hen coop lying high and dry
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on the shore with eleven drowned ducks inside their families
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ate the birds, and the hen coop was split into
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firewood with a hatchet. It is possible that a man,
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supposing he happened to be on deck at the time
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of the accident, might have fluttered ashore on that hen coop.
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He might, I admit, it is improbable, But there was
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the man, and for days, nay for weeks, it didn't
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enter our heads that we had amongst us the only
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living soul that had escaped from that disaster. The man himself,
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even when he learned to speak intelligibly, could tell us
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very little. He remembered he had felt better after the
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ship had anchored, I suppose, and that the darkness, the wind,
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and the rain took his breath away. This looks as
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if he had been on deck some time during that night.
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But we mustn't forget he had been taken out of
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his knowledge, that he had been seasick and batten down
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below for four days, that he had no general notion
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of a ship or of the sea, and therefore could
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have no definite idea of what was happening to him.
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The rain, the wind, the darkness. He knew he understood
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the bleating of the sheep, and he remembered the pain
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of his wretchedness and misery, his heart broken astonishment that
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it was neither seen nor understood, his dismay at finding
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all the men angry and all the women fierce. He
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had approached them as a beggar. It is true, he said,
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But in his country, even if they gave nothing, they
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spoke gently to beggar's. The children in his country were
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not taught to throw stones at those who asked for compassion.
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Smith's strategy overcame him completely. The wood lodge presented the
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horrible aspect of a dungeon. What would be done to
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him next? No wonder that Amy Foster here to his
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eyes with the aureole of an angel in flight. The
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girl had not been able to sleep for thinking of
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the poor man, and in the morning, before the Smiths
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were up, she slipped out across the back yard, holding
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the door of the wood lodge. Ajar. She looked in
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and extended to him half a loaf of white bread,
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such bread as the rich eat in my country, he
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used to say. At this he got up slowly from
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amongst all sorts of rubbish, stiff, hungry, trembling, miserable and doubtful.
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Can you eat this, she asked in her soft and
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timid voice. He must have taken her for a gracious lady.
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He devoured ferociously, and tears were falling on the crust.
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Suddenly he dropped the bread, seized her wrist, and imprinted
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a kiss on her hand. She was not frightened through
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his forlorn condition. She had observed that he was good looking.
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She shut the door and walked back slowly to the kitchen.
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Much later on she told Missus Smith, who shuddered at
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the bare idea of being touched by that creature. Through
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this act of impulsive pity, he was brought back again
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within the pale of human relations, with his new surroundings.
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He never forgot it. Never. That very same morning, old
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mister Swaffer, Smith's nearest neighbor, came over to give his advice,
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and ended by carrying him off. He stood unsteady on
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his legs, meek and caked over in half dried mud,
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while the two men talked around him in an incomprehensible tongue.
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Missus Smith had refused to come downstairs till the madman
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was off the premises. Amy Foster, far from within the
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dark kitchen watched through the open back door, and he
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obeyed the signs that were made to him to the
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best of his ability. But Smith was full of mistrust. Mine,
sir,
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it may be all his cunning, he cried repeatedly in
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a tone of warning. When mister Swaffer started the mare,
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the deplorable being sitting humbly by his side, through weakness,
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nearly fell out over the back of the high two
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wheeled cart. Swaffer took him straight home. And it is
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then that I come upon the scene. I was called
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in by the simple process of the old man beckoning
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to me with his forefinger over the gate of his house,
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as I happened to be driving past. I got down.
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Of course, I've got something here, he mumbled, leading the
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way to an outhouse a little distance from his other
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farm buildings. It was there that I saw him first,
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in a long, low room taken upon the space of
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that sort of coach house. It was bare and whitewashed,
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with a small square aperture, glazed with one cracked, dusty pain.
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At its further end. He was lying on his back
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upon a straw pallet. They had given him a couple
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of horse blankets, and he seemed to have spent the
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remainder of his strength in the exertion of cleaning himself.
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He was almost speechless, his quick breathing under the blankets
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pulled up to his chin. His glittering, restless black eyes
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reminded me of a wild bird caught in a snare.
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While I was examining him, Old Swaffers stood silently by
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the door, passing the tips of his fingers along his
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shaven upper lip. I gave some directions, promised to send
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a bottle of medicine, and naturally made some inquiries. Smith
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caught him in the stockyard at New Barnes, said the
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old chap in his deliberate, unmoved manner, and as if
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the other had been indeed a sort of wild animal.
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That's how I came by him. Quite a curiosity, isn't he?
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Now tell me, doctor, you've been all over the world.
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Don't you think that's a bit of a hindoo we've
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got hold of here? I was greatly surprised. His long
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black hair scattered over the straw bolster contrasted with the
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olive pallor of his face. It occurred to me he
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might be a basque. It didn't necessarily follow that he
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should understand Spanish. But I tried him with a few
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words I knew, and also with some French. The whispered
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sounds I caught by bending my ear to his lips
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puzzled me utterly. That afternoon, the young ladies from the rectory.
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One of them read Girppa with a dictionary, and the
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other had struggled with Dantes for years. Coming to see
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miss Waffer, tried their German and Italian on him from
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the doorway. They retreated just the least bit scared of
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by the flood of passionate speech, which, turning on his pallet,
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he let out at them. They admitted that the sound
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was pleasant, soft, musical, but in conjunction with his looks,
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perhaps it was startling, so excitable, so utterly unlike anything
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one had ever heard. The village boys climbed up the
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bank to have a peep through the little square aperture.
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Everybody was wondering what mister Swaffer would do with him.
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He simply kept him. Swaffer would be called eccentric were
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he not so much respected. They will tell you that
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mister Swaffer sits up as late as ten o'clock at
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night to read books, and they will tell you also
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that he can write a check for two hundred pounds
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without thinking twice about it. He himself would tell you
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that the Swaffers had owned a land between this and
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Darnford for these three hundred years. He must be eighty
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five to day, but he does not look a bit
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older than when I first came here. He is a
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great breeder of sheep and deals extensively in cattle. He
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attends market days for miles around in every sort of weather,
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and drives sitting bowed low over the reins, his lank
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gray hair curling over the collar of his warm coat,
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and with a green plaid rug round his legs. The
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calmness of advanced age gives a solemnity to his manner.
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He is clean shaved, His lips are thin
and sensitive.
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Something rigid and monocle in the set of his features
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lends a certain elevation to the character of his face.
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He has been known to drive miles in the rain
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to see a new kind of rose in somebody's garden,
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or a monstrous cabbage grown by a cottager. He loves
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to hear, tell of, or to be shown something that
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he calls outlandish. Perhaps it was just that outlandishness of
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the man which influenced Old Swaffer. Perhaps it was only
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an inexplicable caprice. All I know is that at the
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end of three weeks I caught sight of Psmith's lunatic
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digging in Swaffer's kitchen garden. They had found out he
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could use a spade. He dug barefooted, his black hair
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flowed over his shoulders. I suppose it was Swaffer who
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had given him the striped old cotton shirt, but he
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wore still the national brown cloth trousers in which he
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had been washed ashore, fitting to the leg almost like tights,
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was belted with a broad leathern belt studded with little
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brass discs, and had never yet ventured into the village.
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The land he looked upon seemed to him kept neatly
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like the grounds round a landowner's house. The size of
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the cart horses struck him with astonishment, the roads resembled
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garden walks, and the aspect of the people, especially on Sundays,
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spoke of opulence. He wondered what made them so hard
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hearted and their children so bold. He got his food
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at the back door, carried it in both hands carefully
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to his outhouse and sitting alone on his pallet, would
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make the sign of the Cross. Before he began beside
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the same palette, kneeling in the early darkness of the
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short days, he recited aloud the Lord's Prayer before he slept.
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Whenever he saw Old Swaffer, he would bow with veneration
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from the waist and stand erect while the old man,
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with his fingers over his upper lip, surveyed him silently.
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He bowed also to Miss Swaffer, who kept house frugally
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for her father. A broad shouldered, big boned woman of
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forty three, with a pocket of her dress full of
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keys and a great steady eye. She was church as
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people said, while her father was one of the trustees
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of the Baptist chapel, and wore a little still cross
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at her waist. She dressed severely in black in memory
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of one of the innumerable Bradleys of the neighborhood to
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whom she had been engaged some twenty five five years ago,
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a young farmer who broke his neck out hunting on
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the eve of the wedding day. She had the unmoved
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countenance of the death, spoke very solemn, and her lips
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then like her father's, astonished one, sometimes by a mysteriously
383
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ironic curl. These were the people to whom he owed allegiance,
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and an overwhelming loneliness seemed to fall from the leaden
385
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sky of that winter without sunshine. All the faces were sad.
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He could talk to no one, and had no hope
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of ever understanding anybody. It was as if these had
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been the faces of people from the other world, dead people,
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he used to tell me years afterwards, upon my word,
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I wonder He did not go mad. He didn't know
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where he was, somewhere very far from his mountains, somewhere
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over the water. Was this America? He wondered? End of
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Part two.