They could
spring and strike an opponent with one foot in the chest or in the face,
and spoil the face for many a day, or for ever. It was a gift of the
backwoods and the lumber-camps, practised in hours of stark monotony when
the devils which haunt places of isolation devoid of family life, where
men herd together like dogs in a kennel, break loose. There the man that
dips his fingers "friendly-like" in the dish of his neighbour one minute
wants the eye of that neighbour the next not so much in innate or
momentary hatred, as in innate savagery and the primeval sense of combat,
the war which was in the blood of the first man.
The unarmed appearance of these men did not deceive the pioneer folk of
Lebanon. To them the time had come when the reactionary forces of Manitou
must receive a check. Even those who thought the funeral fanatical and
provocative were ready to defend it.
The person who liked the whole business least was Rockwell. He was
subject to the same weariness of the flesh and fatigue of the spirit as
all men; yet it was expected of him that at any hour he should be at the
disposal of suffering humanity--of criminal or idiotic humanity--patient,
devoted, calm, nervestrung, complete. He was the one person in the
community who was the universal necessity, and yet for whom the community
had no mercy in its troubles or out of them.
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