It was
evident that he was no longer in his right mind.
His harmless aberration was accepted and treated with a degree of
intelligent delicacy hardly to be believed of so rough a community.
During his wife's sudden and severe illness, the safe containing
the funds intrusted to his care by the various benevolent
associations was broken into and robbed, and although the act was
clearly attributable to his carelessness and preoccupation, all
allusion to the fact was withheld from him in his severe
affliction. When he appeared again before the camp, and the
circumstances were considerately explained to him, with the remark
that "the boys had made it all right," the vacant, hopeless,
unintelligent eye that he turned upon the speaker showed too
plainly that he had forgotten all about it. "Don't trouble the old
man," said Whisky Dick, with a burst of honest poetry. "Don't ye
see his memory's dead, and lying there in the coffin with Mammy?"
Perhaps the speaker was nearer right than he imagined.
Failing in religious consolation, they took various means of
diverting his mind with worldly amusements, and one was a visit to
a traveling variety troupe, then performing in the town.
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