Page:Caroline Lockhart--The Fighting Shepherdess.djvu/171

 let it clatter at a gallop that was all but a run down the main street and over the road that led out of Prouty.

It was a crisis, and intuitively she recognized it—one of those emotional climaxes that sear and burn and leave their scars forever.

The powerful horse bounded up the steep grade without slackening, but at the top she checked it, and from the edge of the bench stood looking down upon the crude town sprawling on the flat beneath her. It represented one antagonistic personality to her, and as such she addressed it aloud, with deliberately chosen words, as one throwing down the gauntlet to an enemy.

"You've hurt me! You've never done anything else but hurt me, and I've forgiven and forgotten and tried to make myself believe you didn't mean it. Now I know better.

"You still have it In your power to hurt me, to anger me, sometimes to defeat me. I am one and you are many, but you can't crush me, you can't break my heart or spirit; you can't keep me down! I'll succeed! I may be years in doing it, but I'll win out over you. I'll be remembered when you're rotten In your graves, and if I can live long enough I'll pay back every blow you've ever given me, one by one, and collectively—no matter what it costs me!"