But this swift and brilliant panorama did not long delay his musing
fancy. A dull smart like that of a healing wound drew his mind to a
succession of scenes on the frontier. He dwelt with that strange
fascination which belongs to the memory of hardships--and which we are
all too apt to mistake for regret--upon his life of toil and danger in
the wide desolation of the West. There he met, one horrible winter, the
sister-in-law of a brother captain, a tall, languid, ill-nourished girl
of mature years, with tender blue eyes and a taste for Byron. She had
no home and no relatives in the world except her sister, Mrs. Keefe,
whom she had followed into the wilderness. She was a heavy burden on
the scanty resources of poor Keefe, but he made her cordially welcome
like the hearty soldier that he was. She was the only unmarried white
woman within a hundred miles, and the mercury ranged from zero to -20
degrees all winter. In the spring, she and Farnham were married; he
seemed to have lost the sense of there being any other women in the
world, and he took her, as one instinctively takes to dinner the last
lady remaining in a drawing-room, without special orders.
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