iness, an enormous thick cupful of strong coffee, slightly
tempered by canned milk. She sat at the foot of the long table, opposite
Mr. Lander, a fat, sly-looking man whose eyes twinkled with a look of
mysterious inner amusement, caused, probably, by astonishment at his own
respectability. He had behind him a career of unprecedented villainy, and
that he should end here at Rusty as the solid and well-considered keeper
of the roadhouse was, no doubt, a perpetual tickle to his consciousness.
Down either side of the table were silent and impressive figures busy
with their food. Courteous and quiet they were and beautifully
uninquiring, except in the matter of her supplies. The yellow lamplight
shone on brown bearded and brown clean-shaven faces, rugged and strong
and clean-cut. These bared throats and thickly thatched heads, these
faces, lighted by extraordinary, far-seeing brilliant, brooding eyes,
reminded Sheila of a master's painting of The Last Supper--so did their
coarse clothing melt into the gold-brown shadows of the room and so did
their hands and throats and faces pick themselves out in mellow lights
and darknesses.

After the meal she dragged herself upstairs to Number Five, made scant
use of nicked basin, spoutless pitcher, and rough clean towel, blew out
her little shadeless lamp, and crept in under an immense, elephantine,
grateful weight of blankets and patchwork quilts, none too fresh,
probably, though the sheet blankets were evidently newly washed. Of
muslin sheeting there was none. The pillow was flat and musty. Sheila
cuddled into it as though it had been a mother's shoulder. That instant
she was asleep. Once in the night she woke. A dream waked her. It seemed
to her that a great white flower had blossomed in the window of her room
and that in the heart of it was Dickie's face, tender and as pale as a
petal. It drew near to her and bent over her wistfully. She held out her
arms with a piteous longing to comfort his wistfulness and woke. Her face
was wet with the mystery of dream tears. The flower dwindled to a small
white moon standing high in the upper pane of one of the uncurtained
windows. The room was full of eager mountain air. She could hear a
water-wheel turning with a soft splash in the stream below. There was no
other sound. The room smelt of snowy heights and brilliant stars. She
breathed deep and, quite as though she had breathed a narcotic, slept
suddenly again. This, before any memory of Huds