"Ah!" said Sylvester softly. "That's a good hearing!" He lifted his arm
with Sheila's hand on it and touched it with his lips. "You got me plumb
stirred up," he said with a certain huskiness. "Well!" She took away her
hand and he made a great show of returning to common sense. "I reckon we
are a pretty good pair of friends, after all. But you mustn't be scared
of me, Miss Sheila. That does hurt. Let's forget you told me that."

"Yes--please!"

"Well, then--to get back to business. Do you recollect a story I
told you?"

"A story? Oh, yes--about an Englishman--?"

"Yes, ma'am. That Englishman put his foot on the rail and stuck his glass
in his eye and set his tumbler down empty. And he looked round that bar
of mine, Miss Sheila. You savvy, he'd been all over the globe, that
feller, and I should say his ex-perience of bars was--some--and he said,
'Hudson, it's all but perfect. It only needs one thing.'"

This time Sheila did not ask. She waited.

"'And that's something we have in our country,' said he." Hudson cleared
his throat. He also moistened his lips. He was very apparently excited.
He leaned even farther forward, tilting on the front legs of his chair
and thrusting his face close to Sheila's "'_A pretty barmaid_!' said he."

There was a profound silence in the small room. The runners of a sleigh
scraped the icy street below, its horses' hoofs cracked noisily. The
music of a fiddle sounded in the distance. Babe's voice humming a waltz
tune rose from the second story.

"A barmaid?" asked Sheila breathlessly. She got up from her chair and
walked over to the window. The moon was already high. Over there,
beckoning, stood her mountain and her star. It was all so shining and
pure and still.

"That's what you want me to be--your barmaid?"

"Yes'm," said Sylvester humbly. "Don't make up your mind in a hurry, Miss
Sheila. Wait till I tell you more about it. It's--it's a kind of dream of
mine. I think it'd come close to breaking me up if you turned down the
proposition. The Aura's not an ordin-ar-y bar and I'm not an ordin-ar-y
man, and, say, Miss Sheila, you're not an ordin-ar-y girl."

"Is that why you want me to work in your saloon?" said Sheila, staring
at the star.

"Yes'm. That's why. Let me tell you that I've searched this continent for
a girl to fit my ideal. That's what it is, girl--my ideal. That bar of
mine has got to be perfect. It's near to perfect now. I want when that
Englishman comes back to M