Sometimes he read, renewing an
acquaintance which the new man he was beginning to be must naturally have
made, in earlier days, with Scott's novels. He had necessarily designed
that the new man should possess the same literature and general knowledge
as the bygone Davenport had possessed. For already, as soon as the
general effect of the operations began to emerge from bandages and
temporary discoloration, he had begun to consider Davenport as
bygone,--as a man who had come to that place one evening, remained a
brief, indefinite time, and vanished, leaving behind him his clothes and
sundry useful property which he, the new man who found himself there,
might use without fear of objection from the former owner.
"The sense of new identity came with perfect ease at the first bidding.
It was not marred by such evidences of the old fact as still remained.
These were obliterated one by one. At last the healing was complete;
there was nothing to do but remove all traces of anybody's presence in
the room during Mr. Bud's absence, and submit the hair to the skill of a
barber. The successor of Davenport made a fire in the coal stove,
starting it with the paper the parcels had been wrapped in; and feeding
it first with Davenport's clothes, and then with linen, towels, and other
inflammable things brought in for use during the metamorphosis. He made
one large bundle of the shoes, cans, jars, surgical instruments,
everything that couldn't be easily burnt, and wrapped them in a sheet,
along with the dead ashes of the conflagration in the stove.
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