Be one to me still; I have never needed one so deeply!" "A brother?
Mary, if your eyes were less blue or your hair less golden I might be; but you are too beautiful to be only that to me." "Listen to me--" But she stopped in the midst of her speech, because a white head loomed beside the dim form.

It was the head of a horse, with pricking ears, which now nosed the shoulder of its master, and she saw the firelight glimmering in the great eyes.
"Your horse," she said in a trembling voice, "loves you and trusts you." "It is the only thing which has not feared me.

When it was a colt it came out of the herd and nosed my hand.

It is the only thing which has not fought me, as all men have done--as you are doing now, Mary." The wind that blew up the gorge came in gusts, not any steady current, but fitful rushes of air, and on one of these brief blasts it seemed to Mary that she caught the sound of a voice blown to whistling murmur.

It was a vague thing of which she could not be sure, as faint as a thought.