Outside Hidden Creek told its interminable chattering tale, centuries long, the little skinny horse cropped getting his difficult meal with his few remaining teeth.  They could hear the dogs move with a faint rattle of chains.  Sometimes there would be a distant rushing sound, a snow-slide thousands of feet above their heads on the mountain.  Above these familiar sounds there came, at about eight o’clock that evening, the rattle of horse’s hoofs through the little stream and at the instant broke out the hideous clamor of the dogs, a noise that never failed to whiten Sheila’s cheeks.

Miss Blake sat up straight and snatched off her spectacles.  She looked at Sheila with a hard look.

“Have you been sending out invitations, Sheila?” she asked.

“No, of course not,” Sheila had flushed.  She could guess whose horse’s hoofs were trotting across the little clearing.

A man’s voice spoke to the dogs commandingly.  Miss Blake’s eyebrows came down over her eyes.  A man’s step struck the porch.  A man’s knock rapped sharply at the door.

“Come in!” said Miss Blake.  She spoke it like a sentry’s challenge.

The door opened and there stood Cosme Hilliard, hat in hand, his smiling Latin mouth showing the big white Saxon teeth.

Sheila had not before quite realized his good looks.  Now, all his lithe, long gracefulness was painted for her against a square of purple night.  The clean white silk shirt fitted his broad shoulders, the wide rider’s belt clung to his supple waist, the leather chaps were shaped to his Greek hips and thighs.  No civilized man’s costume could so have revealed and enhanced his beautiful strength.  And above the long body his face glowed with its vivid coloring, the liquid golden eyes that moved easily under their lids, the polished black hair sleekly brushed, the red-brown cheeks, the bright lips, flexible and curved, of his Spanish mother.

“Who in God’s name are you?” demanded Miss Blake in her deepest voice.

“This is Mr. Hilliard,” Sheila came forward.  “He is the man that brought me over The Hill, Miss Blake—­after I’d lost my horse, you know.”  There was some urgency in Sheila’s tone, a sort of prod to courtesy.  Miss Blake settled back on her spine and recrossed her legs.

“Well, come in,” she said, “and shut the door.  No use frosting us all, is there?” She resumed her spectacles and her reading of the “Popular Science Monthly.”

Hilliard, still smiling, bowed to her, took Sheila’s hand for an instant, then moved easily across the room and settled on his heels at one corner of the hearth.  He had been riding, it would seem, in the thin silk shirt and had found the night air crisp.  He rolled a cigarette with the hands that had first drawn Sheila’s notice as they held his glass on the bar; gentleman’s hands, clever, sensitive, carefully kept.  From his occupation, he looked up at Miss Blake audaciously.