"
"Hell!" The word rose slowly to Hitchcock's lips, and brimmed over full
and deep, in a way which bespoke wonder and consideration.
"Wherefore we stand by a forking of the trail, you and I," she went on
calmly, "and I have come that we may look once more upon each other, and
once more only."
She was born of primitive stock, and primitive had been her traditions
and her days; so she regarded life stoically, and human sacrifice as part
of the natural order. The powers which ruled the day-light and the dark,
the flood and the frost, the bursting of the bud and the withering of the
leaf, were angry and in need of propitiation. This they exacted in many
ways,--death in the bad water, through the treacherous ice-crust, by the
grip of the grizzly, or a wasting sickness which fell upon a man in his
own lodge till he coughed, and the life of his lungs went out through his
mouth and nostrils. Likewise did the powers receive sacrifice. It was
all one. And the witch doctor was versed in the thoughts of the powers
and chose unerringly. It was very natural. Death came by many ways, yet
was it all one after all,--a manifestation of the all-powerful and
inscrutable.
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