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