Digital heart book

He was come of good people Down East, and had the
beginnings of a thorough education. His temper had
been ungovernable from the first; and it is likely the
defect was inherited, and the blame of the rupture not
entirely his. He ran away at least to sea; suffered
horrible maltreatment, which seemed to have rather
hardened than enlightened him; ran away again to shore
in a South American port; proved his capacity and made
money, although still a child; fell among thieves and
was robbed; worked back a passage to the States, and
knocked one morning at the door of an old lady whose
orchard he had often robbed. The introduction appears
insufficient; but Nares knew what he was doing. The
sight of her old neighbourly depredator shivering at
the door in tatters, the very oddity of his appeal,
touched a soft spot in the spinster's heart. "I always
had a fancy for the old lady," Nares said, "even when
she used to stampede me out of the orchard, and shake
her thimble and her old curls at me out of the window
as I was going by; I always thought she was a kind of
pleasant old girl.


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