We'll camp right
with them, en' try to hold them."
"Judkins, I'll reward you some day for your service, unless all
is taken from me. Get the boys and tell Jerd to give you pick of
my horses, except Black Star and Night. But--do not shed blood
for my cattle nor heedlessly risk your lives."
Jane Withersteen rushed to the silence and seclusion of her room,
and there could not longer hold back the bursting of her wrath.
She went stone-blind in the fury of a passion that had never
before showed its power. Lying upon her bed, sightless,
voiceless, she was a writhing, living flame. And she tossed there
while her fury burned and burned, and finally burned itself out.
Then, weak and spent, she lay thinking, not of the oppression
that would break her, but of this new revelation of self. Until
the last few days there had been little in her life to rouse
passions. Her forefathers had been Vikings, savage chieftains who
bore no cross and brooked no hindrance to their will. Her father
had inherited that temper; and at times, like antelope fleeing
before fire on the slope, his people fled from his red rages.
Jane Withersteen realized that the spirit of wrath and war had
lain dormant in her. She shrank from black depths hitherto
unsuspected. The one thing in man or woman that she scorned above
all scorn, and which she could not forgive, was hate. Hate headed
a flaming pathway straight to hell.
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