And all day long, in the barn at the rear of the smithy, Wildman Hanson kept up his groaning, and moaning, and cursing; shouting at the top of his voice that he was being murdered, and threatening a separate strangling to half a dozen men whom he called by name, talking to them as if they were by his side.
Towards closing time, a brilliant burst of evening sunshine flooded the smithy, and with it came one whose radiating charm made the sun for a moment slide back to second place.
“Hullo, dad!” she cried. “I thought you weren’t going to work here any more?”
“Hullo, Eilie! I thought so, too, but–––Oh, Eileen, this is Phil.”
Eileen Pederstone looked in admonishing surprise at her father.
“I beg pardon! Mr. Ralston, our new man,––my daughter, Miss Eileen!”
The young lady bowed sedately to Phil, who was standing a mere dark silhouette against the glare of the furnace fire. But Eileen was in the full glow of the flames and, as Phil looked into her face, he gasped for breath and his heart commenced to thump under his open shirt.
It was the face of the good samaritan, the good fairy that had of late so often been pictured in his mind in the day-time, the face that smiled to him at night through his dreams.
In a flash, he saw himself again; bearded, unkempt, ragged, faint and hunted, groping for support against the wall of the little kitchen in the bungalow up on the hill; the sweet vision of the fearless maid whose heart had opened in practical sympathy to his broken appeal for succour, her ready response and–––
But he pushed his crowding thoughts away, for he was standing before her––pale, mute and almost foolish.