"Spare the boy!" she whispered.
"You can't save him now," replied Tull stridently.
Her head was bowing to the inevitable.

She was grasping the truth, when suddenly there came, in inward constriction, a hardening of gentle forces within her breast.

Like a steel bar it was stiffening all that had been soft and weak in her.

She felt a birth in her of something new and unintelligible.

Once more her strained gaze sought the sage-slopes.
Jane Withersteen loved that wild and purple wilderness.