and write, Dickie?"

"Yes, ma'am." He managed a smile. "If you think a fellow can push a
plough and write poetry with the same hand."

"It's been done before. And--and you will send me back to Hilliard
and--the good old world?"

Dickie's artificial smile left him. He stood, white and stiff, looking
down at her. He tried to speak and put his hand to his throat.

"And I must leave you here," Sheila went on softly, "with my stars?"

She got up and walked over to the door and stood, half-turned from him,
her fingers playing with the latch.

Dickie found part of his voice.

"What do you mean, Sheila, about your stars?"

"You told me," she said carefully, "that you would go and work and then
come back--But, I suppose--"

That was as far as she got. Dickie flung himself across the room. A chair
crashed. He had his arms about her. He was shaking. That pale and tender
light was in his face. The whiteness of a full moon, the whiteness of a
dawn seemed to fall over Sheila.

"He--he can give you everything--" Dickie said shakily.

"I've been waiting"--she said--"I didn't know it until lately. But I've
been waiting, so long now, for--for--" She closed her eyes and lifted her
soft sad mouth. It was no longer patient.

That night Dickie and Berg lay together on the hide before the fire,
wrapped in a blanket. Dickie did not sleep. He looked through the
uncurtained, horizontal window, at the stars.

"You've got everything else, Hilliard," he muttered. "You've got the
whole world to play with. After all, it was your own choice. I told you
how it was with me. I promised I'd play fair. I did play fair." He sighed
deeply and turned with his head on his arm and looked toward the door of
the inner room. "It's like sleeping just outside the gate of Heaven,
Berg," he said. "I never thought I'd get as close as that--" He listened
to the roar of Hidden Creek. "It won't be long, old fellow, before we
take her down to Rusty and bring her back." Tears stood on Dickie's
eye-lashes. "Then we'll walk straight into Heaven." He played with the
dog's rough mane. "She'll keep on looking at the stars," he murmured.
"But I'll keep on looking at her--_Sheila_."

But Sheila, having made her choice, had shut her eyes to the world and to
the stars and slept like a good and happy child.

***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HIDDEN CREEK***

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