He Was Gentle With Me, Knowing That I Had
Suffered Much, And Was Not Free Yet.
I read it again in the way he had counselled, and then refused to
think any more on the subject.
I was sick of thinking. Like the wretch
who long has tossed upon the thorny bed of pain, I only wanted to
repair my vigour lost and breathe and walk again. To be on horseback,
galloping over the green pampas, in sun and wind. For after all it was
only a reprieve, not a commutation of sentence - though one of a kind
unknown in the Courts, in which the condemned man is allowed out on
bail. My pardon was not received until a few years later. I returned
with a new wonderful zest to my old sports, shooting and fishing, and
would spend days and weeks from home, sometimes staying with old
gaucho friends and former neighbours at their ranches, attending
cattle-markings and partings, dances, and other gatherings, and also
made longer expeditions to the southern and western frontiers of the
province, living out of doors for months at a time.
Despite my determination to put the question off, my mind, or sub-
conscious mind, like a dog with a bone which it refuses to drop in
defiance of its master's command, went on revolving it. It went to bed
and got up with me, and was with me the day long, and whenever I had a
still interval, when I would pull up my horse to sit motionless
watching some creature, bird or beast or snake, or sat on the ground
poring over some insect occupied with the business of its little life,
I would become conscious of the discussion and argument going on.
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