There was a long stillness.  That dreadful climax to the special “business” of the Hilliards was relived in both their memories.  But it was something of which neither could speak.  Sheila wondered if the beautiful mother was that instant wearing the hideous prison dress.  She wished that she had read the result of the trial.  She wouldn’t for the world question this pale and silent young man.  The rest of their ride was quiet and rather mournful.  They rode back at sunset and Hilliard bade her a troubled good-bye.

She wanted to say something comforting, reassuring.  She watched him helplessly from where she stood on the porch as he walked across the clearing to his horse.  Suddenly he slapped the pocket of his chaps and turned back.  “Thunder!” he cried, “I’d forgotten the mail.  A fellow left it at the ford.  A paper for Miss Blake and a letter for you.”

Sheila held out her hand.  “A letter for me?” She took it.  It was a strange hand, small and rather unsteady.  The envelope was fat, the postmark Millings.  Her flush of surprise ebbed.  She knew whose letter it was—­Sylvester Hudson’s.  He had found her out.

She did not even notice Cosme’s departure.  She went up to her loft, sat down on her cot and read.

“MY DEAR MISS SHEILA: 

“I don’t rightly know how to express myself in this letter because I know what your feelings toward Pap must be like, and they are fierce.  But I have got to try to write you a letter just the same, for there are some things that need explaining.  At first, when my hotel and my Aura were burned down [here the writing was especially shaky] and I found that you and Dickie had both vamoosed, I thought that you had paid me out and gone off together.  You can’t blame me for that thought, Miss Sheila, for I had found him in your room at that time of night or morning and I couldn’t help but see that he was aiming to kiss you and you were waiting for his kiss.  So I was angry and I had been drinking and I kissed you myself, taking advantage of you in a way that no gentleman would do.  But I thought you were different from the Sheila I had brought to be my barmaid.

“Well, ma’am, for a while after the fire, I was pretty near crazy.  I was about loco.  Then I was sick.  When I got well again, a fellow who come over from Hidden Creek told me you had gone over to be at a ranch there and that you had come in alone.  That sort of got me to thinking about you more and more and studying you out, and I begun to see that I had made a bad mistake.  Whatsoever reason brought that damn fool Dickie to your room that morning, it wasn’t your doings, and the way you was waiting for his kiss was more a mother’s way.  I have had some hard moments with myself, Miss Sheila, and I have come to this that I have got to write and tell you how I feel.  And ask your forgiveness.  You see you were something in my life, different from anything that had ever been there.  I don’t rightly know—­I likely never