"You said there was something you wished to tell me," said Fleda, at
last.
The woman gazed slowly round at the three, as though with puzzled appeal.
There was the look of the Outlander in her face; of one who had been
exiled from familiar things and places. In manner she was like a child.
Her glance wandered over the faces of the two women, then her eyes met
those of the Ry, and stayed there.
"I am old and I have seen many sorrows," said Gabriel Druse, divining
what was in her mind. "I will try to understand."
"I have known all the bitterness of life," interposed the low, soft voice
of Madame Bulteel.
"All ears are the same here," Fleda added, looking the woman in the eyes.
"I will tell everything," was the instant reply. Her fingers twined and
untwined in her lap with a nervousness shown by neither face nor body.
Her face was almost apathetic in its despair, but her body had an upright
courage.
She sighed heavily and began.
"My name is Arabella Stone. I was married from my home over against Wind
River by the Jumping Sandhills.
"My father was a lumberman. He was always captain of the gang in the
woods, and captain of the river in the summer.
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