will know—­what you meant in my life.  I handled you in my heart like a flower.  Before God, I had a religion for you.  And that was just why, when I thought you was bad, that it drove me crazy.  I wonder if you will understand this.  You are awful young and awful ignorant.  And I have hurt your pride.  You are terrible proud for your years, Miss Sheila.  I ache all over when I think that I hurt your pretty mouth.  I hope it is smiling now.  I am moving out of Millings,—­Me and Momma and Babe.  But Girlie is agoing to marry Jim.  He run right back to her like a little lost lamb the second you was gone.  Likely, he’ll never touch liquor again.  I haven’t heard from Dickie.  I guess he’s gone where the saloons are bigger and where you can get oysters with your drinks.  He always was a damn fool.  I would dearly like to go over to Hidden Creek and see you, but I feel like I’d better not.  It would hurt me if I got a turn-down from you like it will hurt me if you don’t answer this letter, which is a mighty poor attempt to tell you my bad reasons for behaving like I did.  I am not sorry I thrashed Dickie.  He had ought to be thrashed good and plenty.  And he has sure paid me off by burning down my Aura.  That was a saloon in a million, Miss Sheila, and the picture of you standing there back of my bar, looking so dainty and sweet and fine in your black dress and your frills—­well, ma’am, I’ll sure try to be thinking of that when I cash in.

“Well, Miss Sheila, I wish you good fortune in whatever you do, and I hope that if you ever need a friend you will overlook my bad break and remember the artist that tried to put you in his big work and—­failed.”

This extraordinary document was signed—­“Sylvester.”  Sheila was left bewildered with strange tears in her throat.

CHAPTER VII

SANCTUARY

There came to the restaurant where Dickie worked, a certain sallow and irritable man, no longer in his early youth.  He came daily for one of his three meals:  it might be lunch or dinner or even breakfast, Dickie was always in haste to serve him.  For some reason, the man’s clever and nervous personality intrigued his interest.  And this, although his customer never threw him a glance, scowled at a newspaper, barked out an order, gulped his food, stuck a fair-sized tip under the edge of his plate, and jerked himself away.

On a certain sluggish noon hour in August, Dickie, as far as the kitchen door with a tray balanced on his palm, realized that he had forgotten this man’s order.  He hesitated to go back.  “Like as not,” reasoned Dickie, “he didn’t rightly know what the order was.  He never does look at his food.  I’ll fetch him a Spanish omelette and a salad and a glass of iced tea.  It’s a whole lot better order than he’d have thought of himself.”

Nevertheless, it was with some trepidation that he set the omelette down before that lined and averted countenance.  Its owner was screwed into his chair as usual, eyes, with a sharp cleft between their brows, bent on his folded newspaper, and he put his right hand blindly on the fork.  But as it pricked the contents of the plate a savory fragrance rose and the reader looked.