"
"I have known all the bitterness of life," interposed the low, soft voice
of Madame Bulteel.
"All ears are the same here," Fleda added, looking the woman in the eyes.
"I will tell everything," was the instant reply. Her fingers twined and
untwined in her lap with a nervousness shown by neither face nor body.
Her face was almost apathetic in its despair, but her body had an upright
courage.
She sighed heavily and began.
"My name is Arabella Stone. I was married from my home over against Wind
River by the Jumping Sandhills.
"My father was a lumberman. He was always captain of the gang in the
woods, and captain of the river in the summer. My mother was deaf and
dumb. It was very lonely at times when my father was away. I loved a
boy--a good boy, and he was killed breaking horses. When I was twenty-one
years old my mother died. It was not good for me to be alone, my father
said, so he must either give up the woods and the river, or he or I must
marry. Well, I saw he would not marry, for my mother's face was one a man
could not forget."
The old man stirred in his seat. "I have seen such," he said in his deep
voice.
"So it was I said to myself I would marry," she continued, "though I had
loved the Boy that died under the hoofs of the black stallion.
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