“No,—­but he told me about that too.  I don’t see why, whenever a poor criminal escapes, he always comes into our mountains.  I don’t like to ’pack a gun’—­unless I’m hunting.  But Brian Oakley didn’t scold me for that, though—­he knows I always do as he says.  He scolded because I hadn’t told you about my going to see Mr. King, in the spring glade.”  She laughed, conscious of the color that was in her cheeks.  “I told him it didn’t matter whether I told you or not, because he always knows every single move I make, anyway.”

“Why didn’t you tell me, dear?” asked the woman.  “You never kept anything from me, before—­I’m sure.”

“Why dearest,” the girl answered frankly, “I don’t know, myself, why I didn’t tell you”—­which, Myra Willard knew, was the exact truth.

Then Sibyl told her foster-mother everything about her acquaintance with the artist and Conrad Lagrange—­from the time she first watched the painter, from the arbor in the rose garden, where she met the novelist; until that afternoon, when she had invited them to supper, the next day.  Only of her dancing before the artist, the girl did not tell.

Later in the evening, Sibyl—­saying that she would sing Myra to sleep—­took her violin to the porch, outside the window; and in the dusk made soft music until the woman’s troubled heart was calmed.  When the moon came up from behind the Galenas, across the canyon, the girl tiptoed into the house, to bend over the sleeping woman, in tender solicitude.  With that mother tenderness belonging to all true women, she stooped and softly kissed the disfigured face upon the pillow.  At the touch, Myra Willard stirred uneasily; and the girl—­careful to make no sound—­withdrew.

On the porch, she again took up her violin as if to play; but, instead, sat motionless—­her face turned down the canyon—­her eyes looking far away.  Then, quickly, she put aside the instrument, and—­as though with sudden yielding to some inner impulse—­slipped out into the grassy yard.  And there, in the moon’s white light,—­with only the mountains, the trees, and the flowers to see,—­she danced, again, as she had danced before the artist in the glade—­with her face turned down the canyon, and her arms outstretched, longingly, toward the camp in the sycamores back of the old orchard.

Suddenly, from the room where Myra Willard slept, came that shuddering, terror-stricken cry.

The girl, fleet-footed as a deer, ran into the house.  Kneeling, she put her strong young arms about the cowering, trembling form on the bed.  “There, there, dear, it’s all right.”

The woman of the disfigured face caught Sibyl’s hand, impulsively.  “I—­I—­was dreaming again,” she whispered, “and—­and this time—­O Sibyl—­this time, I dreamed that it was you.”

Chapter XXI

The Last Climb

That first visit of Aaron King and Conrad Lagrange to the old home of Sibyl Andres was the beginning of a delightful comradeship.