"So you've come," the girl said. The words were spoken unusually soft, scarcely above a whisper; but they were inexpressibly vivid to Bruce. In his lifetime he had heard many words that were just so many lifeless selections from a dictionary,—flat utterances with no overtones to give them vitality. He had heard voices in plenty that were merely the mechanical result of the vibration of vocal cords. But these words—not for their meaning but because of the quality of the voice that had spoken them—really lived. They told first of a boundless relief and joy at his coming. But more than that, in these deep vibrant tones was the expression of an unquenchable life and spirit. Every fiber of her body lived in the fullest sense; he knew this fact the instant that she spoke.
She smiled at him, ever so quietly. "Bwovaboo," she said, recalling the name by which she called him in her babyhood, "you've come to Linda."
IX
As the fire burned down to coals and the stars wheeled through the sky, Linda told her story. The two of them were seated in the soft grass in front of the cabin, and the moonlight was on Linda's face as she talked. She talked very low at first. Indeed there was no need for loud tones. The whole wilderness world was heavy with silence, and a whisper carried far. Besides, Bruce was just beside her, watching her with narrowed eyes, forgetful of everything except her story.
It was a perfect background for the savage tale that she had to tell. The long shadow of the giant pine tree fell over them. The fire made a little circle of red light, but the darkness ever encroached upon it. Just beyond the moonlight showed them silver-white patches between the trees, across which shadows sometimes wavered from the passing of the wild creatures.
"I've waited a long time to tell you this," she told him. "Of course, when we were babies together in the orphanage, I didn't even know it. It has taken me a long time since to learn all the details; most of them I got from my aunt, old Elmira, whom you talked to on the way out. Part of it I knew by intuition, and a little of it is still doubtful.
"You ought to know first how hard I have tried to reach you. Of course, I didn't try openly except at first—the first years after I came here, and before I was old enough to understand." She spoke the last word with a curious depth of feeling and a perceptible hardness about her lips and eyes. "I remembered just two things. That the man who had adopted you was Newton Duncan; one of the nurses at the asylum told me that. And I remembered the name of the city where he had taken you.
"You must understand the difficulties I worked under. There is no rural free delivery up here, you know, Bruce. Our mail is sent from and delivered to the little post-office at Martin's store—over fifteen miles from here. And some one member of a certain family that lives near here goes down every week to get the mail for the entire district.
"At first—and that was before I really understood—I wrote you many letters and gave them to one of this family to mail for me. I was just a child then, you must know, and I lived in the same house with these people. And queer letters they must have been."