o?" he asked at last.

Sammy shook her head without looking up; "Don't know; anywhere
that Daddy can earn a livin'--I mean living--for us."

"And when do you start?"

"Pretty soon now; there ain't nothin'--there is nothing to stay
for now. Father told me when he went away day before yesterday
that we would go as soon as he returned. He promised to be home
sometime this evening. I--I couldn't tell you before, Dad, but I
guess you knew."

The shepherd did know. For weeks they had both avoided the
subject.

Sammy continued; "I--I've just been over to the Matthews place.
Uncle Matt has been gone three days now. I guess you know about
that, too. Aunt Mollie told me all about it. Oh, I wish, I wish I
could help them." She reached for another daisy and two big tears
rolled from under the long lashes to fall with the golden petals.
"We'll come back in the spring when it's time to plant again, but
what if you're not here?"

Her teacher could not answer for a time; then he said, in an odd,
hesitating way, "Have you heard from Ollie lately?"

The girl raised her head, her quick, rare instinct divining his
unspoken thought, and something she saw in her old friend's face
brought just a hint of a smile to her own tearful eyes. She knew
him so well. "You don't mean that, Dad," she said. "We just
couldn't do that. I had a letter from him yesterday offering us
money, but you know we could not accept it from him." And there
the subject was dropped.

They spent the afternoon together, and in the evening, at Sammy's
Lookout on the shoulder of Dewey, she bade him good-night, and
left him alone with his flocks in the soft twilight.

That same evening Mr. Matthews returned from his trip to the
settlement.

CHAPTER XX.

THE SHEPHERD WRITES A LETTER.

To purchase the sheep and the ranch in the Hollow, Mr. Matthews
placed a heavy mortgage not only upon the ranch land but upon the
homestead as well. In the loss of his stock the woodsman would
lose all he had won in years of toil from the mountain wilderness.

When the total failure of the crops became a certainty, and it was
clear that the country could not produce enough feed to carry his
flock through the winter until the spring grass, Mr. Matthews went
to the settlement hoping to get help from the bank there, where he
was known.

He found the little town in confusion and the doors of the bank
closed. The night before a band of men had entered the building,
and,