this respect, with his own. The world, he had recently learned, was
wrong in his case; might it not also be doing her injustice? Her pride,
in its coarse way, was his also, and his life, perhaps, had only
unfolded into honorable success through a mother's ever-watchful care
and never-wearied toil.

"Deborah," he said, after a pause, "no man or woman who makes an honest
living by hard work, is bad company for me. I am trying to do the same
thing that you are,--to be independent of others. It's not an easy thing
for anybody, starting from nothing, but I can guess that it must be much
harder for you than for me."

"Yes, you're a man!" she cried. "Would to God I'd been one, too! A man
can do everything that I do, and it's all right and proper. Why did the
Lord give me strength? Look at that!" She bared her right arm--hard,
knitted muscle from wrist to shoulder--and clenched her fist. "What's
that for?--not for a woman, I say; I could take two of 'em by the necks
and pitch 'em over yon fence. I've felled an Irishman like an ox when he
called me names. The anger's in me, and the boldness and the roughness,
and the cursin'; I didn't put 'em there, and I can't git 'em out now, if
I tried ever so much. Why did they snatch the sewin' from me when I
wanted to learn women's work, and send me out to yoke th' oxen? I do
believe I was a gal onc't, a six-month or so, but it's over long ago.
I've been a man ever since!"

She took a bottle out of her pocket, and offered it to Gilbert. When he
refused, she simply said: "You're right!" set it to her mouth, and drank
long and deeply. There was a wild, painful gleam of truth in her words,
which touched his sympathy. How should he dare to judge this unfortunate
creature, not knowing what perverse freak of nature, and untoward