-buried chimney turned to a moving silver plume across the
blue of the winter night sky--intense and warm as though it reflected an
August lake.

The door of the cabin opened with a sharp thrust and Sheila stepped
out. She walked quickly through the firs and stood on the edge of the
open range-land, beyond and below which began the dark ridge of the
primeval woods. She stood perfectly still and lifted her face to the
sky. For all the blaze of the moon the greater stars danced in
radiance. Their constellations sloped nobly across her dazzled vision.
She had come very close to madness, and now her brain was dumb and
dark as though it had been shut into a blank-walled cell. She stood
with her hands hanging. She had no will nor wish to pray. The knowledge
had come to her that if she went out and looked this winter Pan in the
face, her brain would snap, either to life or death. It would burst its
prison ... She stared, wide-eyed, dry-eyed, through the immense cold
height of air up at the stars.

All at once a door flew open in her soul and she knew God ... no visible
presence and yet an enveloping reality, the God of the savage earth, of
the immense sky, of the stars, the God unsullied and untempted by man's
worship, no God that she had ever known, had ever dreamed of, had ever
prayed to before. She did not pray to Him now. She let her soul stand
open till it was filled as were the stars and the earth with light....

The next day Sheila found her voice and sang at her work. She gave
herself an overwhelming task of cleaning and scrubbing. She was on her
knees like a charwoman, sniffing the strong reek of suds, when there came
a knocking at her door. She leapt up with pounding heart. But the
knocking was more like a scraping and it was followed by a low whine. For
a second Sheila's head filled with a fog of terror and then came a homely
little begging bark, just the throaty, snuffling sob of a homeless puppy.
Sheila took Cosme's six-shooter, saw that it was loaded, and, standing in
the shelter of the door, she slowly opened it. A few moments later the
gun lay a yard away on the soapy, steaming floor and Berg was held tight
in her arms. His ecstasy of greeting was no greater than her ecstasy of
welcome. She cried and laughed and hugged and kissed him. That night,
after a mighty supper, he slept on her bed across her feet. Two or three
times she woke and reached her hand down to caress his rough thick coat.
The warmth of his b