doin' jobs aroun', an' such, an' I've lived here, a-workin' mine, a
little, but not much. After my mother died there was some folks down in
th' valley took keer of me for a while, but then they moved away, an' I
was old enough to want things bad, an' what I wanted was to come back
here, where I could see th' place where mother an' my daddy had both
loved me an' been happy. I've got some land down in th' valley--fifty
acres o' fine pasture--but I never cared to live down there. Th' rent I
get for that land makes me rich--I ain't never wanted for a single thing
but just th' love an' carin' that my daddy an' my mother would 'a' give
me if that wicked man hadn't killed 'em both. For he _did_ kill my
mother, just as much as he killed daddy. She died o' that an' that
alone."

Again she fell into a silence for a time, looking out at the tremendous
prospect spread before them, quite unseeing.

"Oh," she went on, at length, her face again darkened by a frown, her
small hands clenched, every muscle of her lithe young body drawn as taut
as a wild animal's before a spring. "I sometimes feel as if I'd like to
do as other mountain women have been known to do when killin' of that
sort has blackened all their lives--I sometimes feel as if I'd like to
take a rifle in my elbow an' go lookin' for that man--go lookin' for him
in th' mountings, in th' lowlands, anywhere--even if I had to cross th'
oceans that they tell about, in order to come up with him!"

Her voice had been intensely vibrant with strong passion as she said
this, and her quivering form told even plainer how deep-seated was the
hate that gave birth to her words. But soon she put all this excitement
from her and dropped her hands in a loose gesture of hopeless
relaxation.