When the shepherd finished his brief account, the girl said, “Tell me all, Dad.  I want to know all.  Did—­did they take Daddy away?”

The old man’s eyes were dim as he answered gently, “No, dear girl; they did not take him away.”  Then Sammy knew why Dad had scrubbed the cabin floor, and what the three men who talked so low had been doing in the other room.

She made no outcry, only a moan, as she looked away across the silent hills and the valley, where the mists were slowly lifting; lifting slowly like the pale ghost of the starlight that was.  “Oh, Daddy, Daddy Jim.  You sure kept your promise.  You sure did.  I’m glad—­glad they didn’t get you, Daddy.  They never would have believed what I know; never—­never.”

But there were no tears, and the shepherd, seeing after a little touched her hand.  “Everything is ready, dear; would you like to go now?”

“Not just yet, Dad.  I must tell you first how I came to be at home, and why I am glad—­oh, so glad, that I was here.  But call the others, please; I want them all to know.”

When the three, who with her teacher loved her best, had come, Sammy told her story; repeating almost word for word what she had heard her father say to the men.  When she had finished, she turned her face again to the open window.  The mists were gone.  The landscape lay bright in the sun.  But Sammy could not see.

“It is much better, so much better, as it is, my child,” said the old scholar.  “You see, dear, they would have taken him away.  Nothing could have saved him.  It would have been a living death behind prison walls away from you.”

“Yes, I know, Dad.  I understand.  It is better as it is.  Now, we will go to him, please.”  They led her into the other room.  The floor in the corner of the cabin where the shepherd had washed it was still damp.

Through it all, Sammy kept her old friend constantly by her side.  “It is easier, Dad, when you are near.”  Nor would she leave the house until it was all over, save to walk a little way with her teacher.

Young Matt and his father made the coffin of rough boards, sawed at the mill; and from the country round about, the woods-people came to the funeral, or, as they called it in their simple way, the “burying.”  The grave was made in a little glen not far from the house.  When some of the neighbors would have brought a minister from the settlement, Sammy said, “No.”  Dad would say all that was necessary.  So the shepherd, standing under the big trees, talked a little in his simple kindly way, and spoke the words, “Earth to earth, dust to dust, ashes to ashes.”  “As good,” declared some, “as any preacher on earth could o’ done hit;” though one or two held “it warn’t jest right to put a body in th’ ground ‘thout a regular parson t’ preach th’ sermon.”

When the last word was spoken, and the neighbors had gone away over the mountains and through the woods to their homes, Aunt Mollie with her motherly arm about the girl, said, “Come, honey; you’re our girl now.  As long as you stay in the hills, you shall stay with us.”  And Old Matt added, “You’re the only daughter we’ve got, Sammy; and we want you a heap worse than you know.”