of the table were silent and impressive figures busy with their food.  Courteous and quiet they were and beautifully uninquiring, except in the matter of her supplies.  The yellow lamplight shone on brown bearded and brown clean-shaven faces, rugged and strong and clean-cut.  These bared throats and thickly thatched heads, these faces, lighted by extraordinary, far-seeing brilliant, brooding eyes, reminded Sheila of a master’s painting of The Last Supper—­so did their coarse clothing melt into the gold-brown shadows of the room and so did their hands and throats and faces pick themselves out in mellow lights and darknesses.

After the meal she dragged herself upstairs to Number Five, made scant use of nicked basin, spoutless pitcher, and rough clean towel, blew out her little shadeless lamp, and crept in under an immense, elephantine, grateful weight of blankets and patchwork quilts, none too fresh, probably, though the sheet blankets were evidently newly washed.  Of muslin sheeting there was none.  The pillow was flat and musty.  Sheila cuddled into it as though it had been a mother’s shoulder.  That instant she was asleep.  Once in the night she woke.  A dream waked her.  It seemed to her that a great white flower had blossomed in the window of her room and that in the heart of it was Dickie’s face, tender and as pale as a petal.  It drew near to her and bent over her wistfully.  She held out her arms with a piteous longing to comfort his wistfulness and woke.  Her face was wet with the mystery of dream tears.  The flower dwindled to a small white moon standing high in the upper pane of one of the uncurtained windows.  The room was full of eager mountain air.  She could hear a water-wheel turning with a soft splash in the stream below.  There was no other sound.  The room smelt of snowy heights and brilliant stars.  She breathed deep and, quite as though she had breathed a narcotic, slept suddenly again.  This, before any memory of Hudson burned her consciousness.

The next morning she found that her journey had been carefully arranged.  Thatcher had come and gone.  The responsibility for her further progress had been shifted to the shoulders of a teamster, whose bearded face, except for the immense humor and gallantry of his gray eyes, was startlingly like one of Albrecht Duerer’s apostles.  Her bundle was in his wagon, half of his front seat was cushioned for her.  After breakfast she was again escorted down the board walk to the gate.  Mrs. Lander fastened a huge bunch of sweet peas to her coat and kissed her cheek.  Sheila bade innumerable good-byes, expressed innumerable thanks.  For Hilliard’s absence Rusty offered its apologies.  They said that he had been much entertained and, after the hurt he had suffered to his wrist, late sleep was a necessity.  Sheila understood.  The bowl of reparation had been emptied to its last atoning dregs.  She mounted to the side of “Saint Mark,” she bowed and smiled, made promises, gave thanks again, and waved herself out of Rusty at last.  She had never felt so flattered and so warmed at heart.