For a time, the rude and
earth-born child of the cave was lifted into a region of comparative
sentiment and imagination. It was an experience which affected materially
all his later life.
Ever to the trotting man came the feelings which must follow fierce love
and deadly action and vague remorse and fear of something indefinable. He
saw the face and form of Lightfoot; he saw again the struggle,
death-ending, with the friend of youth and of mutual growing into manhood.
He remembered dimly the half insane flight, the leaps across the dreaded
morass and, more distinctly, the chase by the wolves. The aspect of the
Fire Country and of all that followed his awakening was, of course, yet
fresh in his mind. He was burdened.
Ever uprising and oppressing above all else was the memory of the man he
had killed and buried, covering the face first, so that it might not look
at him. Was Oak really dead? he asked himself again! Had not he, Ab, as
soon as he slept again, seen, alive and well, the close friend of his? He
clung to the vision. He reasoned as deeply as it was in him to reason.
As he struggled in his mind to obtain light there came to him the fancy of
other things dimly related to the death mystery which had perplexed him
and all his kind. There must be some one who made the river rise and fall
or the nut-bearing forest be either fruitful or the hard reverse.
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