Publisher's Synopsis
Here I am at the end of the railroad, waiting to begin my two-days' wagon-trip across the mountains. But the school wagon has not arrived, -my landlady says it is delayed by a "tide" in the creeks. By way of cheering me, she has just given a graphic account of the twenty-year-old feud for which this small town is notorious, and has even offered to take me around and show me, on walls, floors and court-house steps, the blood-spots where seven or eight of the feudists have perished. I declined to go, -it is sad enough to know such things exist, without seeing them face to face. Besides, I have enough that is depressing in my own thoughts. When I locked the doors of the old home day before yesterday, I felt as a ghost may when it wanders forth from the tomb. For a year I had not been off the place; it seemed I should never have the courage to go again. For I am one whom death has robbed of everything, -not only of my present but of my future. In the past seven years all has gone; and with Mother's passing a year ago, my very reason for existence went.
