It was ten o'clock, and now she lay on the old man's lap asleep from exhaustion. A cricket began chirping in the fireplace, under a hearth-brick.
“What's that, Pap?” asked Shiloh half asleep.
“That's a cricket, Pet,” smiled the old man.
She listened a while with a half-amused smile on her lips:
“Well, don't you think his spindles need oilin', Pap?”
There was little but machinery in her life.
Another hour found the old man tired, but still holding the sleeping child in his arms:
“If I move her she'll wake,” he said to himself. “Po' little Shiloh.”
He was silent a while and thoughtful. Then he looked up at the shadow of Sand Mountain, falling half way down the valley in the moonlight.
“The shadow of that mountain across that valley,” he said, “is like the shadow of the greed of gain across the world. An' why should it be? What is it worth? Who is happier for any money more than he needs in life?”