At the time that I knew him he had
become a man of some substance, and naturally a staunch upholder of the
existing order of things. But while he never boasted of his past deeds,
he never apologized for them, and evidently would have been quite as
incapable of understanding that they needed an apology as he would have
been incapable of being guilty of mere vulgar boastfulness. He did not
often allude to his past career at all. When he did, he recited its
incidents perfectly naturally and simply, as events, without any
reference to or regard for their ethical significance. It was this
quality which made him at times a specially pleasant companion, and
always an agreeable narrator. The point of his story, or what seemed to
him the point, was rarely that which struck me. It was the incidental
sidelights the story threw upon his own nature and the somewhat lurid
surroundings amid which he had moved.
On one occasion when we were out together we killed a bear, and after
skinning it, took a bath in a lake.
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