Chapter XIV. A Mystery is Unravelled - Page 2

country where mixed blood is about the only thing that can't be lived down or overlooked, and I've been raised with notions of family honor and pride of race and birth, and so forth, that might seem preposterous and absurd to you. But a heap of conceits like that have been bred into me from generations back; they run in the blood of every old family in my country, and so, I'm ashamed to say, I hesitated and tried to reason myself into giving her up, but I've had my eyes opened, and I see how little those things amount to, after all. I'm going to marry Necia, Mr. Gale. I'd like to do it the day after to-morrow, Sunday, but she isn't of age yet, and if you object, we'll have to wait until November, when she turns eighteen. We'd both like your consent, of course; I'd be sorry to marry her without it; but if you refuse, we'll be forced to displease you." He looked up and met the father's gaze steadily. "Now, I'll be glad to listen as long as you care to talk, but I don't think it will do any good."

The other man's lips framed a faint smile.

"We'll see. I wish to God I'd had your decision when I was your age, this story would be different, and easier to tell." He waited a moment, then settled to his self-appointed task. "I was mining at the time up in the Mother Lode country of California, which was the frontier then, pretty much as this is now, only we had better things to eat. I came from the East, or my people did, but I was ranch- raised, and loved the hills and woods and places where you don't talk much, so I went to prospecting because it took me out where the sun was bright and I could see the wild things at play. I was one of the first men into a camp named Chandon--helped to build it, in fact, and got hold of some ground that looked real good. It was hard mining, however, and, being poor, I was still gripping my drill and hammer after the town had grown up.

"A woman came out from the East--Vermont, it was--and school- teaching was her line of business, only she hadn't been raised to it, and this was her first clatter at the game; but things had broke bad for her people, and ended in her pulling stakes and coming West all alone. Her folks died and left her up against it, I gathered from what little she told me--sort of an old story, I guess, and usual too, only for her. She was plumb unusual."

He seemed to ponder this a moment, and then resumed:

"It don't make any difference to you how I first saw her, and how I began to forget that anything else in the world was worth having but her. I'd lived in the woods all my life, as I said, and knew more about birds and bugs and bees than I did about women; I hadn't been broke proper, and didn't know how to act with them; but I laid out to get this girl, and I did fairly well. There's something wild in every woman that needs to be tamed, and it isn't like the wildness that runs in wood critters; you can