W. C. Morrow

“ She kept her eyes and ears strained for signs and sounds of human life. At intervals she would call aloud with all her might, and after hearing the echo of her voice die away in the canon, wait breathlessly for a response that never came. With eager haste she pushed on. Clambering over fallen trees, heading gullies that she could not leap, wading swift rivulets with which the rapidly melting snow was still ploughing the road, she came at length within view of some men who were clearing the road with axes and mending it with shovels,—the rough, strong, silent, capable men of the mountains. ”

“ In a hopeless stupor she sat, in speechless dread of the blow that she felt must fall. To her dazed attention the avenger himself stood before her in all the terror of infuriated justice free from its leash and plunging forward headlong and irresistible to satisfy its vengeance. Never had she dreamed that a mortal could face a thing so terrible as this man, who, having dragged her from death, and with infinite patience, gentleness, and unselfishness had been nursing her back to health and strength, now stood as the judge and executioner of her naked, trembling, convicted soul. ”

“ I love him for everything that he is, not for anything that he has done. He is the one man whom the great God in His cruel wisdom and merciless providence has sent into my life for me to love. And with my tears wetting these pages, and my soul breathing prayers for his recovery, and his delivery to me, I pledge and consecrate myself to him to the end of my days, whatever may come. With every good impulse within me I will strive to be worthy of so great a heart, so noble a love. ”

“ It will remain with me forever, whatever happen, to have known a man; to have known him in his strength and weakness, in his splendid unselfishness and childish reliance; in his simplicity and complexity; in his singleness of purpose and variety of attributes; in his gentleness and ferocity, and, above all, in his wonderful sense of duty. But I wish he were moved by something besides duty.
“There is another thing I must write, and I write it with a consciousness of burning cheeks. At times I find him—rather, I feel him—looking at me with a certain gentleness when I am not observing. ”

“ I believed that she had formed an attachment for this—this fiddler—bah! Everything in me revolts when I think of it. Here was a girl that was pretty, sweet, gracious, the soul of trust and fidelity, ready to throw herself away upon an unspeakable fiddler! And there was no excuse whatever for it. A score of men adored her,—men of her own station in life,—men of wealth, men of culture, men of strength and character, men of birth, men of consequence in the world. Incredible as it may seem, they passed over other girls far more capable in every way, and sighed for this shy violet. ”

“ The blood-murderer is infinitely better than that. He has at least a human heart in all its savage majesty.
“And for what is such a murder done? It proceeds from a dwarfed, distorted soul, deliberately, consciously, intelligently made so by its possessor. Its purpose is to destroy the one touch of beauty, sweetness, and purity that makes us akin to the angels. It sees an exquisite flower; that flower must be plucked, else its beauty would flourish and its destiny be fulfilled. ”

“ After all the seeming bridging of the chasm that had separated them, it opened now all the wider and deeper and darker.
“Do you know what a murderer is?” he exclaimed in a loud voice, as he swung his arm threateningly aloft. “A she-wolf, the slyest and most dangerous of beasts. She comes whining and fawning; she licks your hand; she wins your trust. And then, when you have warmed her, and patched her torn skin, and mended her broken bones, she turns upon you and tears out your heart with her fangs.” ”

“ Instantly she dragged herself out of the crushing tumult into which she had been plunged.
“Yes,” she said, radiant with love and towering above the wreck that encompassed her, “the noblest of all lives is still left to us, and it shall have all that lies in us to give.”
“Then,” said Dr. Malbone, “time is very precious. Let us take him to my home at once.”
The sun had set behind the western mountains, but it still tipped the snowy summit of Mount Shasta with a crimson glow. ”

“ It is strange how many unexpected things we learn of others in intimate association!...
“In glancing over these last pages I see how wretchedly I have failed to give the least insight into our life and relations. How could I ever have had the heart to see, much more put in writing, the slightest flaw in so noble a character? It would seem that the sympathy born of this new relation between us ought to touch only the best in my nature. Shame, shame, shame on me! Do I not see his haunting glance follow me everywhere, and resting upon me always with inexpressible gratitude? ”

“ I think I can understand now why men sometimes kill women. Why should men and women be so different? Why should it be impossible for them to comprehend each other? It was Murder that I saw standing before me—both the horrible picture of murder as he painted it, with me as the murderess—me as the murderess!—and Murder in the flesh as he stood ready to strangle me. Oh, the incredible ferocity of the man, the terrible, wild savagery of him, the awful dark and nether side of his strangely complex character! ”

“ Have I learned men so badly that I can mistake its meaning? The most convenient woman will do for the man who may prefer another but inaccessible one. Until we came closer together since the avalanche passed and the sunshine came, I was not a woman to him. No; I was a Duty. But there has now come into his voice and his glance a new quality,—stay! Remember that the weakness of women is their vanity. Could there happen so wonderful a thing as this man’s regard for me of the kind that a woman wants from the man whom she worships? ”

“ There is no man in the world like you, none that knows me, that loves me as you do! If you only knew how my heart yearns every moment for you! Why could not this man have the least of your qualities,—your iron will, your scorn of weak things in human nature, your dominating, achieving power It is in comparing this man with you that I find him so small, so pusillanimous, so different from the standard of manhood that you have made me adopt, so different from me, so infinitely far from me. ”

“ He knew that in agony of soul she rebelled against the fate that had placed her helpless in the hands of a stranger, and that stranger a man, and that man the one now serving her, however willingly, however faithfully, with whatever tact and delicacy. He saw, from her hopless glance about the cabin, the bitterness of the fight that she was making to accept its repellent hospitality. ”

“ With incredible labor—he no longer protesting against her full share in the work, and she heedless of her lameness and of its serious hindrance to her efforts—they together, hand in hand, clambered over the snow until they stood above the hut, and cheerily began to dig it free,—a task seemingly so far beyond their powers that something wonderful must have sustained them in assailing it. Thus they were working in the afternoon sunshine, for the first time boon companions, and as happy and light-hearted as children, when an exclamation from Wilder drew her attention to the dam. ”

“ He attacked the branches with his axe and cleared them away. He half wondered that the eyes of the dead remained open while they filled with particles of the bark riven by the axe. Presently the body came within reach. With unspeakable repulsion the young man placed his hand upon the stranger’s chest. There was no sign of life. Indeed, he wondered that he had taken any trouble to ascertain what he already knew.
All this time the young man’s dread and terror, heightened by a sense of utter loneliness in the presence of the dead, had driven the woman from his mind. ”

“ It would be worse than foolhardy for him to brave the storm and the darkness. At any moment she might recover consciousness and find herself alone and suffering in this strange place; and a whole night and day would hardly have been sufficient for him to fetch the surgeon, had that been a physical possibility. So the young man realized that he alone, with no training in the surgeon’s and physician’s art, must take this woman’s life in his hands, and for a long time to come be her physician and nurse, cook and housekeeper, mother and confidant, father and protector. ”

“ The roaring of the wind, the surge of the torrential river, and, worst of all, the trees that were now crashing down, might have bewildered the steadiest head not trained to the winter savagery of the wilderness. A single tree across the road ahead might have meant disaster. Except for the little stone hut of Adrian Wilder, placed purposely to secure as great isolation as possible, and invisible from the road, there was no shelter within miles of the spot. ”

“ Nature is kind to all of her children who love her and seek her. She heaps our past with wreckage, only to train and prepare us for a noble future. There can be no peace where there has been no travail. There would be no strength were there no weakness in need of its help. The man who fails to the slightest extent in his duties to humanity and himself burdens his life to that extent. Be brave and hopeful and helpful, as it becomes a man to be, and labor incessantly for the best, as it becomes a man to do. ”

“ Far back in the mountains, that wilder wilderness of the Trinity range, and in the Siskiyou range, beyond them, there were huge gray wolves, fierce and formidable. Now and then a daring hunter had come out of those mountains with the skin of a great gray wolf. There were old stories in the mountains that when the snow had been deep and of prolonged duration, the gray wolves came down to the tamer reaches inhabited by men, driven thither by hunger, for the game upon which they subsisted had fled before the snow to find herbage. ”

“ They were big and powerful, and men who had seen them hungry told fearful tales of their daring and ferocity. If the snow should drive them down, they would find the dead horses under the tree; and after that there would be but one house here where they could find human beings.
There need be no dread of them; but suppose that some night there should come a scratching at the door of the hut,—that would mean the gaunt shewolf, who bore away children to the wolf-pack.
She would beg for a rind of bacon to eat, and a corner on the hearth to sleep. ”

“ The only prospect for the escape of Wilder and his charge was on foot, after the lapse of the months that would be required for her recovery, and after the snow was gone.
Innumerable domestic perplexities presented themselves to the young man’s mind. His charge, being perfectly helpless, must depend entirely upon him for her every want. Would she have the wisdom and goodness to accept the situation cheerfully, or would its humiliation and hardships gnaw constantly at her strength and patience, and delay her recovery or precipitate her death? ”

“ Where are my resources of womanly tact that I have used successfully in the past? Why is it that I fail utterly to impress him as having a single admirable trait, a single grace of appearance, manner, or character?
“It is hard to bear all this. I try to be brave and strong and cheerful, as he always is; but it is human nature to resent his treatment, and it is cruel of him to keep me in such a position. It is the first time in my life that I have been at a disadvantage. ”

“ It is done by one who, coming into the world with a soul fresh and complete from the hands of the Creator, deliberately turns aside from the way of nature and nature’s God, crushes the attributes that form our one link with heaven and our one hope of immortality, throttles all that might be useful in bringing light and strength into the lives of others, and in shameless defiance of the Almighty’s manifest will sets up false gods to worship, sacrifices self-respect for self-love, banishes the essence of life and clings to the dross, and wallows like swine in a mire of his own making. ”