Sheilah lay on the crest of a hill and gazed up at the sky. There were great banks of soft white clouds in the sky. It seemed almost as if she could touch them, if she reached up, they were so near. Much nearer than the banks of feathery treetops far below—clouds, too, gray-green, slowly rising. She lay among the blue and yellow flames of August asters, flat on her back, arms outstretched, face turned upward to the sky, on a bed of short tufted grass, soft and springy, like curled hair. She didn't know a bed could be so soft and yet so firm. Like certain hands she had known once long ago—Dr. Sheldon's hands. Or certain arms—her father's, that terrible night when he had held her from flying to pieces.
Dr. Baird had ridden over from his cabin to see Sheilah two days after she had arrived at Avidon's. He had ridden over to see Sheilah every day for the first week. Now Sheilah traveled herself, and on foot, the two miles and a half of lumber-road that lay between Avidon's and the glorified log-cabin in the woods, for a draft of the wisdom distilled there. The effect of Dr. Baird's clear, simple, unmysterious explanation of the various vagaries of Sheilah's tired
