Her mother did not answer for a moment.
"'I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee,'" she breathed at last. And not till long afterward, when tears had worn the first keen edge from her grief, did the little girl know the full meaning of the promise.
"Pull back the curtains from the eastern windows," said her mother; "I want to see the sky. Is the night clear?"
"The stars are out, mother."
"Ah, I love the stars!"
"Are they the same ones that I'll see when—when—I'm away from here?"
"The very same, pet lamb."
"You and I will watch them and think of that, mother."
The neighbor woman turned on the lounge, and they fell into silence again. The little girl remained standing at a window, her face pressed close to the glass.
As she waited there, the whole east began gradually to spring into flame. The sky blazed as ruddily as if a great fire were just beyond the horizon and racing to leap it and sweep across upon the farm. A broad fan of light, roseate at its pivot and radiating in shafts of yellow and red, was rising and paling the stars with its shining edge. Wider and wider it grew, until from north to south, and almost as far up as the zenith, were thrust its shining sticks. Then out of the cold mist floating over the distant Sioux showed a copper segment of the moon, which rose into sight and careened slowly heavenward, lighting up the wide plains, glimmering on the placid water of the sloughs, and shining full into the face of the dreaming little girl.