So the purest liver and most cleanly thinker has often cursed and uttered
horrible imprecations and profanations under the knife, being chloroformed
and unconscious the while. Uncle Chirgwin gazed and listened open mouthed.
This spectacle of a shattered intellect came upon him as an absolutely new
manifestation. Any novel experience is rare when a man has passed the age
of seventy, and the farmer was profoundly agitated. Then a solemn fit fell
upon Gray Michael, and as his visitor rose to depart he quoted from words
long familiar to the speaker--weird utterances, and doubly weird from a
madman's mouth in Uncle Chirgwin's opinion. Out of the wreck and ruin of
quite youthful memories, Michael's maimed mind had now passed to these
later, strenuous days of his early religious existence, when he fought for
his soul, and lived with the Bible in his hand.
"Hark to me, will 'e? Hark to the word o' God echoed by His worm. 'He that
heareth let en hear, an' he that forbeareth let en forbear, for they are a
rebellious house.' An' what shall us do then? Theer was a man as builded a
heydge around a guckoo, thinkin', poor fool, to catch the bird; but her
flew off. That edn' the Lard's way. 'Make a chain, for the land is full o'
bloody crimes an' the city is full o' violence!' 'An' all that handle the
oar, the mariners, an' all the pilots o' the sea, shall come down from
theer ships,' an' me amongst the rest.
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