so we talked
and talked, while the first snow fell and continued to fall and make a
surface for my sleds. And this was her story.

"She was frontier-born, of poor settlers, and you know what that
means--work, work, always work, work in plenty and without end.

"'I never seen the glory of the world,' she said. 'I had no time. I knew
it was right out there, anywhere, all around the cabin, but there was
always the bread to set, the scrubbin' and the washin' and the work that
was never done. I used to be plumb sick at times, jes' to get out into
it all, especially in the spring when the songs of the birds drove me
most clean crazy. I wanted to run out through the long pasture grass,
wetting my legs with the dew of it, and to climb the rail fence, and
keep on through the timber and up and up over the divide so as to get a
look around. Oh, I had all kinds of hankerings--to follow up the
canyon beds and slosh around from pool to pool, making friends with
the water-dogs and the speckly trout; to peep on the sly and watch the
squirrels and rabbits and small furry things and see what they was doing
and learn the secrets of their ways. Seemed to me, if I had time, I
could crawl among the flowers, and, if I was good and quiet, catch them
whispering with themselves, telling all kinds of wise things that mere
humans never know.'"

Trefethan paused to see that his glass had been refilled.

"Another time she said: 'I wanted to run nights like a wild thing, just
to run through the moonshine and under the stars, to run white and naked
in the darkness that I knew must feel like cool velvet, and to run and
run and keep on running. One evening, plumb tuckered out--it had been a
dreadful hard hot day, and the bread wouldn't raise and the churning had
gone wrong, and I was all irritated and jerky--well, that evening I
made mention to dad of this wanting to run of mine. He looked at me
curious-some and a bit scared. And then he gave me two pills to take.
Said to go to bed and get a good sleep and I'd be all hunky-dory in
the morning. So I never mentioned my hankerings to him, or any one any
more.'

"The mountain home broke up--starved out, I imagine--and the family came
to Seattle to live. There she worked in a factory--long hours, you
know, and all the rest, deadly work. And after a year of that she became
waitress in a cheap restaurant--hash-slinger, she called it. She said
to me once, 'Romance I guess was what I wanted. But there wan't