Hidden Creek

d, his hands hanging between his knees, his lips parted, and he watched the night. It seemed to him that it was filled with the clamor of iron-throated beasts running to and

y, its top black with heads. "It ain't a crowd," thought Dickie; "it's a swarm." His eyes followed the ragged sky-line. "Why is it so horrible?" he asked himself-"horrible and beautiful and sort of poisonous-it plumb scares a fellow-" A diminished moon, battered and dim like a trodden silver coin, stood up above him. By tilting his head he cou

e he dreaded the job and the room. The inspiration of his flight, the impulse that had sped him out of Millings like a fire-tipped arrow, that determination to find Sheila, to rehabilitate himself in her esteem, to serve her, to make a fresh start, had fallen from him like a dead flame. The arrow-flight was spent. He had not found Sheila. He had no way of finding her. She was not at her old address. Her father's friend, the Mr. Hazeldean that had brought Sylvester to Marcus's studio, knew nothing of her. Mrs. Halligan, her former landlady, knew nothing of her. Dickie, having summoned Mrs. Halligan to her doorsill, had looked past her up the narrow, steep staircase. "Did she live away up there?" he had asked. "Yes, sorr. And 't was a climb for the poor little crayture, but there was days when she'd come do

ife. His spirit had a fashion of standing away, tiptoe, on wings. It stood so now like a presence above the miserable, half-starved body that occupied the bench and suffered the sultriness of August and th

seemed to leap away from the contact and then to leap almost irresistibly to meet it. He turned away and went back quickly toward the Square. It seemed to him that he was followed. He looked over his shoulder furtively. But the girl had disappeared and there was no one in sight but a man who walked unsteadily. Dickie suddenly knew why he had saved that dime. The energy of a definite purpose came to him. He remembered a swinging door back there around a corner, but when he reached the saloon, it was closed. Dickie had a humiliating struggle with tears. He went back to his bench and sat ther