I'll never git
shet o' him in this world. He's allers clost to me everywhar.' Yer
see, 'twas jest his conscience er whippin' him. Thet's all 't wuz. 'T
least, thet's all I think 't wuz; though thar wuz those thet said 't wuz
Claiborne's ghost. 'N' thet'll be the way 't 'll be with this miser'ble
Farrar. He'll live ter wish he'd let hisself be hanged er shot, er erry
which way, ter git out er his misery."
Young Merrill listened with unwonted gravity to Aunt Ri's earnest
words. They reached a depth in his nature which had been long
untouched; a stratum, so to speak, which lay far beneath the
surface. The character of the Western frontiersman is often a
singular accumulation of such strata, -- the training and beliefs of
his earliest days overlain by successions of unrelated and violent
experiences, like geological deposits. Underneath the exterior
crust of the most hardened and ruffianly nature often remains -- its
forms not yet quite fossilized -- a realm full of the devout customs,
doctrines, religious influences, which the boy knew, and the man
remembers, By sudden upheaval, in some great catastrophe or
struggle in his mature life, these all come again into the light.
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