I stayed on there a week. It was on her invitation. She promised to fit me outwith dogs and sleds and with Indians that would put me across the best pass of theRockies in five hundred miles. Her fly was pitched apart from the others, on thehigh bank by the river, and a couple of Indian girls did her cooking for her and thecamp work. And so we talked and talked, while the first snow fell and continued tofall 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 rightout 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 plumbsick at times, jes' to get out into it all, especially in the spring when the songs of thebirds drove me most clean crazy. I wanted to run out through the long pasturegrass, wetting my legs with the dew of it, and to climb the rail fence, and keep onthrough the timber and up and up over the divide so as to get a look around. Oh, Ihad all kinds of hankerings-to follow up the canyon beds and slosh around frompool to pool, making friends with the water-dogs and the speckly trout; to peep onthe sly and watch the squirrels and rabbits and small furry things and see what theywas doing and learn the secrets of their ways. Seemed to me, if I had time, I couldcrawl among the flowers, and, if I was good and quiet, catch them whispering withthemselves, 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 runthrough the moonshine and under the stars, to run white and naked in the darknessthat I knew must feel like cool velvet, and to run and run and keep on running. Oneevening, plumb tuckered out-it had been a dreadful hard hot day, and the breadwouldn'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 lookedat me curious-some and a bit scared. And then he gave me two pills to take. Said togo to bed and get a good sleep and I'd be all hunky-dory in the morning. So I nevermentioned my hankerings to him, or any one any more.'"The mountain home broke up-starved out, I imagine-and the family came toSeattle to live. There she worked in a factory-long hours, you know, and all therest, deadly work. And after a year of that she became waitress in a cheaprestaurant-hash-slinger, she called it. She said to me once, 'Romance I guess waswhat I wanted. But there wan't no romance floating around in dishpans andwashtubs, or in factories and hash-join