Even in the shadow of after events, those first two months at Miss Blake's ranch swam like a golden galleon through Sheila's memory. Never had she felt such well-being of body, mind, and soul. Never had she known such dawns and days, such dusks, such sapphire nights. Sleep came like a highwayman to hold up an eager traveler, but came irresistibly. It caught her up out of life as it catches up a healthy child. Never before had she worked so heartily: out of doors in the vegetable garden; indoors in the sunny kitchen, its windows and door open to the tonic air; never before had she eaten so heartily. Nothing had tasted like the trout they caught in Hidden Creek, like the juicy, sweet vegetables they picked from their own laborious rows, like the berries they gathered in nervous anticipation of that rival berryer, the brown bear. And Miss Blake's casual treatment of her, half-bluff, half-mocking, her curt, good-humored commands, her cordial bullying, were a rest to nerves more raveled than Sheila knew from her experience in Millings. She grew rosy brown; her hair seemed to sparkle along its crisp ripples; her little throat filled itself out, round and firm; she walked with a spring and a swing; she sang and whistled, no Mrs. Hudson near to scowl at her. Dish-washing was not drudgery, cooking was a positive pleasure. Everything smelt so good. She was always shutting her eyes to enjoy the smell of things, forgetting to listen in order to taste thoroughly, forgetting to look in the delight of listening to such musical silences, and forgetting even to breathe in the rapture of sight ... Miss Blake and she put up preserves, and Sheila had to invent jests to find some pretext for her laughter, so ridiculous was the look of that broad square back, its hair short above the man's flannel collar, and the apron-strings tied pertly above the very wide, slightly worn corduroy breeches and the big boots. Sheila was always thinking of a certain famous Puss of fairy-tale memory, and biting her tongue to keep it from the epithet. After Hilliard gave her the black horse and she began to explore the mountain game trails, her life seemed as full of pleasantness as it could hold. And yet ... with just that gift of Hilliard's, the overshadowing of her joy began. No, really before that, with his first visit. That was in late September when the nights were frosty and Miss Blake had begun to cut and stack her wood for winter, and to use it for a crackling hearth-fire after supper. They were sitting before such a fire when Hilliard came.