Excerpt from Daughters of Shem: And Other Stories<br><br>It was her mother's illness that had called Zillah back to the hole-and-corner life in the dreary frontier town, just as her eyes were beginning to open on the manifold glories and the' gladness of the outer world, her ears to catch the loudening. Echoes of its thousand voiced laughter, her soul to feel its life-joy, which leavened her placid girlhood with a subtle presage of possible delights. Aye, just then she had to leave it all; but she brought the memory of it, a precious contraband, back with her into captivity, three months of which had ripened her into a woman. One grows old quickly in prison. And to her woman's fancy, which intensified the girl's dream, these things seemed more desirable, more alluring, because of the iron restraint that hemmed in her young life. Not fifty yards from the house loomed up the cross-barred frontier-gate, where the sentries' bayonets gleamed night and day, and fierce-eyed, impatient bloodhounds yelped disconsolately. And beyond them lay the fairy land from which she had been banished, the gladsome companionship of the wider, larger life she so often dwelt on with hungering memory. Every evening, as she heard the rattle of the massive ring-chain being drawn across the gate-posts, she felt the world was locked amid the hard metallic laughter of her malig nant fate.<br><br>About the Publisher<br><br>Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com<br><br>This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.