"Abner Revercomb shot me," he said aloud. "I don't
know much. I don't know whether I am alive or dead. All I am certain of
is that it doesn't matter in the least--that it's too small a fact to
make any fuss about. It's all so small--the blamed thing isn't any more
important than those bees humming out there in the meadow. And I might
as well have developed into any one of my other selves. What were all
those seeds of possibilities for if they never came to anything? Why,
I might have been a hero--it was in me all the time--I might even have
been a god."
Then for the first time he became aware of his body as of something
outside of himself--something that had been tacked on to him. He
felt all at once that his feet were as heavy as logs--that they were
benumbed, that they had fallen asleep, and were filled with the sharp
pricking of thorns. Yet he had no control over them; he could not move
them, could hardly even think of them as belonging to himself. This
sensation of numbness began slowly to crawl upward like some gigantic
insect. He knew it would reach his knees and then pass on to his waist,
but the knowledge gave him no power to prevent its coming, and when he
tried to will his hand to move, it refused to obey the action of his
brain.
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