He called it _home_, that little cup at the foot of
the mountain, with the waterfall singing in summer, and a paradise of
birds and flowers keeping her company, and all the great, wild world she
loved about her. There was the cabin, too; the little cabin where I was
born, with its back to the big mountain, and filled with the handiwork
of my mother as she had left it when she died. And my father too used to
laugh and sing there--he had a clear voice that would roll half-way up
the mountain; and as I grew older the miracle at times stirred me with a
strange fear, so real to my father did my dead mother seem when he was
home. But you look frightened, Miss Standish! Oh, it may seem weird and
ghostly now, but it was _true_--so true that I have lain awake nights
thinking of it and wishing that it had never been so!"
"Then you have wished a great sin," said the girl in a voice that seemed
scarcely to whisper between her parted lips. "I hope someone will feel
toward me--some day--like that."
"But it was this which brought the tragedy, the thing you have asked me
to tell you about," he said, unclenching his hands slowly, and then
tightening them again until the blood ebbed from their veins. "Interests
were coming in; the tentacles of power and greed were reaching out,
encroaching steadily a little nearer to our cup at the foot of the
mountain.
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