The feeling of suffocation Ledyard had managed to create, returned to
him. He grew nervous, ill at ease, and fearful.
Then he fell to moralizing. He was not often given to that, or
introspection. Longing and alternate hope and despair had been his
comrades and bedfellows, but he rarely indulged in calm consideration.
Smoking his pipe, stretched wearily on the moss, he wondered if men knew
how much they punished while fulfilling their ideals of justice?
"If only the sense of vindictiveness could be left out," he thought; "the
Lord knows they have it all in their power once the key is turned on us.
I deserved all they meant to inflict, but no human being deserves all
that was given unconsciously."
Then Farwell relived his life, while the wood crumbled to ashes and the
moon came up over the hills. A misguided, misspent boyhood; too much
money; too little common sense; then the fling in the open with every
emotion and desire uncurbed. Well, he had to learn his lesson and God
knew he had; but why, in the working of things, shouldn't one be given
a chance to prove the well-learned task; an opportunity, while among the
living, to settle the question?
However, such fancies were idle, and Farwell shook the ashes from his
pipe and gave a humorous shrug.
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