The little girl did not appear to tell him goodby, and when he went to his horse at the gate, he called:
“Tell June to come down here. I've got something for her.”
“Go on, baby,” the old man said, and the little girl came shyly down to the gate. Hale took a brown-paper parcel from his saddle-bags, unwrapped it and betrayed the usual blue-eyed, flaxen-haired, rosy-cheeked doll. Only June did not know the like of it was in all the world. And as she caught it to her breast there were tears once more in her uplifted eyes.
“How about going over to the Gap with me, little girl—some day?”
He never guessed it, but there were a child and a woman before him now and both answered:
“I'll go with ye anywhar.”
* * * * * * *
Hale stopped a while to rest his horse at the base of the big pine. He was practically alone in the world. The little girl back there was born for something else than slow death in that God-forsaken cove, and whatever it was—why not help her to it if he could? With this thought in his brain, he rode down from the luminous upper world of the moon and stars toward the nether world of drifting mists and black ravines. She belonged to just such a night—that little girl—she was a part of its mists, its lights and shadows, its fresh wild beauty and its mystery. Only once did his mind shift from her to his great purpose, and that was when the roar of the water through the rocky chasm of the Gap made him think of the roar of iron wheels, that, rushing through, some day, would drown it into silence. At the mouth of the Gap he saw the white valley lying at peace in the moonlight and straightway from it sprang again, as always, his castle in the air; but before he fell asleep in his cottage on the edge of the millpond that night he heard quite plainly again:
“I'll go with ye—anywhar.”