Page:Caroline Lockhart--The Fighting Shepherdess.djvu/383

 me. You saw only that I was absurd in my fantastic clothes, and overly anxious to be friendly. I was the daughter of 'Jezebel of the Sand Coulee' and the protegee of a 'sheepherder.'

"I did not know you then as I do now and your pose of superiority impressed me; I took you at your own valuation and overestimated you ; so I was all but crushed by your condemnation. I was like a child that is whipped without knowing for what it is being punished."

She paused a moment before going on. "Worse things came to me afterwards, but none from which I suffered more keenly — in a different way, perhaps, but not more acutely. The wounds you inflicced that night left scars that never have healed entirely.

"The turning-point in my life came when 'Mormon Joe' was murdered. He was more than a guardian and a benefactor — he had been father, mother, teacher, to me, but with no other grounds than that I benefited by his death, the stigma of murder was placed upon me. There was not evidence to hold me, so I remained a suspect, proven neither guilty nor innocent.

"The murder was little more than an agreeable break in the monotony to most of you, but it revolutionized the world for me — changed the whole scheme of my life — and," with a smile that was tinged with bitterness, "demonstrated to my entire satisfaction the extent to which character is affected by environment."

She went on thoughtfully: " I have come to believe that to know human nature — at least to know it as its worst — one must be the victim of some discreditable misfortune in a small community. Moral cowardice, ingratitude, the greed which is ready to take advantage of some one unable to make an effective protest, the gratuitous insults offered the 'under dog'