I had touched a raw nerve. I was completely shaken by the suddenness of
her answer.
“Mine! Mine! Mine!” she shrieked. Kneeling, she beat up the dust of
the road with her cane. And then “Mine! Mine! Mine!” shaking her
outstretched arms over that amphitheatre, as though she would drag it
all to her breast.
She was out of breath and trembling. At length she smiled, and added so
quietly it seemed another person. “And they shall not take it away from
me.”
I helped her to her feet. She was once more the Martha Washington
sort.... I remember her last sentence. In a royal tone, that was three
times an accolade, in a motherly tone that was caressing and slow she
half-sung the pretty words:--
“Good evening, young man. I wish you well.”
The man at the next house took me in. In the course of the evening he
assured me that the old lady did own the valley, and that she ruled
it with a rod of iron. The family graveyard was full of heirs who had
grown to old age and died of old age hoping in vain to outlive, and to
inherit her authority.