A Whirlwind Visit

Joan was idling dispiritedly over her breakfast. A long, wakeful night had at last ended in the usual aching head and eyes ringed with shadows. She felt dreary, and looked forward drearily to inspecting her farm--which, in her normal state, would have inspired nothing but perfect delight--with something like apprehension.

Her beginning in the new life had been swamped in a series of disastrous events which left her convinced of the impossibility of escape from the painful shadow of the past. All night her brain had been whirling in a perfect chaos of thought as she reviewed her advent to the farm. There had been nothing, from her point of view, but disaster upon disaster. First her arrival. Then--why, then the "luck" of the gold find. In her eyes, what was that but the threat of disaster to come? Had not her aunt told her that this extraordinary luck that she must ever bring was part of the curse shadowing her life? Then the coincidence of her nickname. It was truly hideous. The very incongruity of it made it seem the most terrible disaster of all. Surely, more than anything else, it pointed the hand of Fate. It was her father's nickname for her, and he--he had been the worst sufferer at her hands.

The whole thing seemed so hopeless, so useless. What was the use of her struggle against this hateful fate? A spirit of rebellion urged her, and she felt half-inclined to abandon herself to the life that was hers; to harden herself, and, taking the cup life offered her, drain it to the dregs. Why should she waste her life battling with a force which seemed all-powerful? Why should she submit to the terror of it? What were the affairs of these others to her? She was not responsible. Nothing in the whole sane world of ethics could hold her responsible.