He sometimes wondered, if she were placed in different environment, surrounded by luxuries and admiration, how she would appear; and how she would affect him. In a way he had educated her and refined her. He had grown used to her and taken her for granted, but there were moments when she perplexed him.

His visit to Hillcrest was connected with his little plan to test, in a fashion, this woman he had helped to form.

Her announcement about Drew had diverted his thought, but he returned now to his own interests. Again he wondered if, after all he had done for her, she could rise above Jude and St. Ange to a degree that might touch him—that part of him that he hoped he had conquered forever.

If she could—then—but he would not anticipate. Drew's advent had focussed his desire to put himself, and her, to the test. Joyce had precipitated matters, that was all.

"Joyce!"

She was bending to place a log upon the fire.

"None of that! When I'm at home, the big logs are for me."

She laughed brightly. To be so guarded and cared for never ceased to be exciting.

"And now for my surprise! It's a corker this time, Joyce."

Gaston walked to the lean-to room and brought out two boxes.

"Take them to your room, and put them on," he said.

There were always surprises when Gaston returned from Hillcrest. From out the Somewhere, somehow there drifted marvellous things—books, pictures, dresses, dainty slippers and home furnishings. Things that St. Ange gaped silently upon. Joyce never asked questions. Like a child she shielded this fairy-like mystery from her own curiosity. She was happier not to know.

But to-night the boxes seemed heavy. Not from what they held, but from the weight of her unrest, which was returning with added force.

She obeyed, however, with that quivering smile still upon her lips. Almost staggering under the load, she turned and entered the chamber that had once been Gaston's. It was a woman's room now in every sense. Gone were the rough furniture, the pipes and books. In their places were the white bed, the low rocker, the many trifles that go to meet the endless whims of a woman's fancy and taste. It was an odd room for the shack of a backwoodsman. It had taken Joyce long to settle into it comfortably. Her brief apprenticeship in the home that Gaston had helped Jude make for her was the only preparation she had had for ease among these refinements.

Once within the shelter now, Joyce almost flung the boxes from her. It was dark and cold in the room, and the stillness soothed her. She groped her way to the window and looked out at the little mound near the pines, where all that was really her own—her very own—lay. It had always been a comfort to have the little body so near her place of safety. She had ceased to grieve when once the baby was brought away from the ruin of the former home; but to-night the small oval, under its crust of glittering snow, made her shudder. It was her own—but oh! it was cold and dead like all the rest of her hope and joy. She knew it now. Not even Gaston's coming had cleared the doubt.

She had believed herself so good and happy—and here it was made plain, horribly plain. Everything was wrong. It had always been wrong.

But she dared not shrink into her pain. She must obey, and play her part. Awkwardly she lighted her lamp; tremblingly she untied the boxes—they bore the same mystic signs and the oft-repeated words, "New York." It did not matter. New York or the New Jerusalem, one was as unreal as the other to the backwoods girl.

Oh, but here was surprise indeed!

Joyce had not, as yet, sunk so far in doubt and apprehension, but that the contents of the boxes moved her to interest and delight.

A gown of golden silk, clinging and long. The daintiest of gloves, silken hose, and satin slippers. Filmy skirts, and bewildering ruffles of cobwebby lace. What wild imagination ever conceived of such witcheries; and what power could command their materialization in the North Woods?

Joyce sank beside the boxes, gasping with delight. Then suddenly, as the shock of pleasurable surprise passed, the mockery of the gift struck her. Down went the humbled head, and the girl wept as if her heart would break.

Gaston was playing with her. She had not been keen enough to understand, but all along he had amused himself at her expense. Having had her thrust upon him by circumstances, he had accepted the situation in his good-natured way, but underneath it was as cruel as—all else in her life.

She had been an ignorant, blind fool. Never had Gaston been so daring with her. Other pretty gifts had found a place, and supplied a want, in their common life; but this—this—oh! the incongruity was cruel and—insulting.

Joyce could not analyze all this—she merely felt it. But when it had sunk to the depths of her aroused instinct, the reaction took place. Had the girl been ugly physically, or had Gaston debased her, her doom would have been fixed; but there was a—chance!

In the death throes of her false position, she retraced the steps of her life with Gaston. With a sickening shudder she recalled her mad fear that first awful night when he had shut the door upon Jude and the others. How he had made her feel, and at once, that from the high place that was his, he could afford to help her, and only the low and vile would misunderstand. It was because she was low and vile as Jude had made her that she had feared—what?

How the knowledge had stung, then stunned her! She might have known, had she remembered, from the first Gaston had always driven her back upon herself when her foolish passion for him reared its head.

No one of his own kind would ever have been led into a misunderstanding of his motives and goodness.

Then in the days that followed that first terrible night, she had abased herself and striven to fill the role Gaston prepared for her!

Later she studied and silently prayed that, in a small way, she might repay him for his divine kindness!

But with the patient effort and the marvellous results of quickened mentality, a clear space was left in the new woman for harrowing doubt. She never again sank to the thought that Gaston could love her; but she could not utterly blind herself to the fear that he might be hurting himself through others not realizing the difference between him and her. Naturally she could not go to Gaston with this doubt—it would seem an insult to him, and a shameless suggestion.

Therefore she hailed Drew's advent with mingled apprehension and relief. Had he taken for granted that all was well; had he seemed glad that Gaston had saved her from her evil fate; then she would have known that such people as Gaston and Drew would understand and think no evil. But the effect of Gaston's training and influence had sunk deep. Joyce had risen above the vile thing Jude and St. Ange had tried to make her. She was, for all the wide difference between her and Gaston, a woman! A woman beautiful and alive to the highest degree. She dared not any longer ignore that. For Gaston's sake she must face the blinding truth.

Crouching beside the boxes of finery that he had thought she could not understand, Joyce clenched her hands in an agony of consecration and renunciation. Then despair seized her, and for a wild moment she was tempted to use Gaston's own weapon against him.

Heretofore she had accepted his gifts with a child's delight—what a fool she had been! Suppose now she should—well, take what she could get from life in spite—yes, in spite of Gaston himself?

Dare she? Could she? Would she be able to do anything when she faced him, but fall at his feet, beg for mercy, and implore him to tell her what her awakened conscience demanded?

She would try.

The colour rose and fell in the lovely face. She was beautiful, and she loved him. She had never let him see how much; or how. He should see now! She would try her meanest and basest weapon—and if—if—it conquered, she would make—terms. She, poor, dependent Joyce of the backwoods. Old Jared's girl. Jude Lauzoon's discarded wife. If she won a victory, what a victory it would be!

It would prove to Drew—she rose defiantly, and snatched the finery from the boxes. Her eyes were blazing and her blood ran hotly. Before her little mirror she let the garments of her past life fall from her. She unpinned her glorious hair, and thrilled as its convincing beauty gave added power to her plans.

Slowly, carefully, with a pictured ideal in her memory, she fashioned the wonderful tresses into form. High upon her head the glistening mass was fastened, then cunningly the little curls were pulled loose, and were permitted to go free about the smooth brow and white neck.

Then with an instinct that did not play her false, she donned the marvellous garments.

She was finished at last. The new, palpitating woman. All that belonged to the old Joyce seemed to have fallen, with the discarded garments, to the floor.

She did not doubt her power now. She was not afraid. Something was going to happen—again she experienced the sensation. It had come first in this very shack, when her childhood had departed, and the woman in her had been born. A poor, dull woman, to be sure; still, a woman.

She had felt it, too, the Sunday of her marriage, when Drew had called to her conscience and spirituality, and set the chords of suffering and hope vibrating. From that hour to this she had been climbing painfully to what was about to occur.

Well, she was ready. The bewitching smile played over her face. Tiptoeing across the bedroom floor, she noiselessly unfastened the door, and silently reached Gaston's side.

He had quite forgotten her. Weary from the day's work, perplexed by later developments, with closed eyes, and hands clasped behind his head, he was lost in thought.

Joyce touched him lightly, and he looked up.

She had taken him off guard. Her bewildering beauty attacked his senses while his shield of Purpose was down.

"Good God!" he exclaimed staring at her. "You—you glorious creature!"

She laughed, and the sound thrilled the man as her beauty did. It was new, and wonderful. He staggered to his feet and reached out to her like a man blinded by a sudden glare.

She evaded his touch, and gave that wild little laugh again.

"You like it?" she asked, from across the table.

"Like it? You—are—divine!"

"Why—did—you—do it?"

"I had a mad fancy to see just how great your—beauty was."

"And—you see?"

"Heavens! I do see."

"And you think?"

"What any man would think," Gaston's excitement was rising, "who had been starved for—years—and then finds all he's hungered for—alone in the North Woods. Think?"

The breaking of a flaming log startled them, and it steadied Gaston for a moment. Joyce had herself well in hand. The victory was hers if only she could command this new power long enough.

"Please," she pleaded, "please sit down. I have something to say to you."



CHAPTER XII

Gaston sank back in his chair, and Joyce sat down opposite. The table was between them, and the light of the fire and lamp flooded over the girl.

She was wonderful in that gown, and with her splendid, pale hair framing her face with its fair glory.

The shock of surprise was passing, but Gaston still looked at the girl as if he had never seen her before.

"What is it, Joyce?" he asked presently; "what has changed you so?" Then he smiled, for the question seemed crude and ill-advised.

"The dress—isn't that what you wanted?"

"I do not mean the dress—there is something else."

"So there is—but it came with the dress. Perhaps you—did not order that—well, then, it must be your part of the surprise. Don't you remember that story you read to me once—about the mantle of Elijah? You know it made the humble wearer—great. Well, these pretty things,"—she touched them lightly—"they make me—a woman. The sort of woman who must—ask questions—and get answers—true answers."

"Why, don't you trust—me?"

The pained question was wrung from Gaston's lips. The steady look from the big eyes went strangely to his heart.

"I—do—not know—you—as you—are now," she said firmly.

"It is not I who am changed, Joyce, it is you. Everything is just the same except that I see you are more—wonderful than I dreamed."

"Nothing is going to be the same again. I knew it while Mr. Drew was talking the other day—I have thought it all out since."

"Curse him!" Gaston broke in; "what did he say? Why did you go to him Joyce? How could you?"

There was pain in the words—pain and a dumb fear.

"It only happened to be Mr. Drew. Some one would have made me know in time."

"Joyce;" he was actually pleading with her! The knowledge burnt into the quickening soul. "Joyce, what did you trust in me, before you went to Drew?"

"Your goodness—your—unselfishness. I knew the goodness—I have only begun to see the—unselfishness."

"My unselfishness? Good heavens!" In spite of the strangeness of it all, Gaston laughed. Then an impatience stifled him. A brute instinct drove him on. Her beauty had captured his senses, and he meant to tear down the pitiful wall he had upbuilded between her and him, and force her to see the inevitable.

He had wondered if she could stir him—well he knew now. What idiots they had both been!

He was through with the Past forever. The Past that had held him to a false ideal. There should be no more imbecile philosophy in the North Woods as far as he and she were concerned.

"See here," he began, and his voice was almost hard; "don't you know when I shut you away from what you knew as danger—Jude and all the rest of the hell that went with him—I shut you away from what people—people like Drew and his set—know as mercy?"

Joyce's eyes widened, but she did not speak. Gaston rushed on—he wanted the scene over. She was too heavenly beautiful sitting there, he must bring her closer.

"They would call you—well, they wouldn't call you a good woman. They are very particular about their women. In a way, you must have known this, Joyce. You've played the game like a thoroughbred, and when one considers how you've played it, the wonder grows—but they'd never believe that—even if we told them. Great heavens! how could they, if they saw you?

"That there was no other way for me to help you then, that you had no other shelter in God's world would not alter the case at all. And I've been a fool, Joyce, a maudlin fool—all along!"

The woman opposite was looking at him through tears, but the sweet mouth was quivering pitifully.

"Joyce"; the tone caused the tear-dimmed eyes to close; "let us face the music—and—dance along to the tune."

Gaston leaned toward her and when she dared to look at him she saw that the future was in her hands!

"You—you thought I knew this all along?"

"In a way—yes!"

Joyce's eyes dropped and a flush rose to her pale, still face.

"Then those—those people—the good people, what would they have thought about you?"

"Oh! some would have thought me a—damned scoundrel; and they would have been right had I ever intended to leave you to their mercy. Others—well, others—"

"Please tell me, you see I want to understand everything and that world is not mine—you know."

"The others,"—and now Gaston dropped his own eyes—"the others would have forgotten all about it—had I chosen to go back!"

"But they—would not have forgotten about me?"

"No. That is their imbecile code."

"And—and men know that and yet—" Her eyes widened in a dumb terror—"why, they are worse than—the people of St. Ange!"

Suddenly Gaston flung his head back and looked full at the beautiful face. It was radiant, but the eyes were overflowing. It seemed to him as if she, coming out from her shadows, were bringing all wronged womanhood with her.

"You know Joyce, you must have known no matter what else you thought, and you must know now, I never meant to leave you to their—mercy?"

He knew that he was speaking truth to her and it gave him courage.

"Yes; yes!" she cried. "I know that above all and everything."

Joyce saw that she was gaining power. She knew that, marvellous as it seemed, she was to shape their future lives. But she must have the sky clear. Gaston, she felt, recognized this as well as she. He expected but one outcome; he saw her love, and was willing to show his own, now that the barriers were down.

"We need ask nothing!" he said softly; "and there are deeper woods to the north, dear."

"Can you—will you—tell me about yourself before—you came here?"

The question was asked simply and it was proof, if any were needed, that the past false position was utterly annihilated.

Gaston accepted the changed conditions with no sense of surprise. He acknowledged her right to all that she desired.

"When I said, a time back"; he began slowly; "that they—those good people we were talking about—would let me into their world if I—left you"; his fingers closed firmer over her hands; "I did not tell you that there is another reason why they would not let me in. They could overlook some things—but not others. Suppose I should tell you that I had done a wrong that was worse, in their eyes, than almost anything else?"

"I would not believe it!"

"But that is God's truth."

She grew a little paler, but she did not withdraw her hands.

With smarting recollection Gaston remembered how, back there in the old life, two small hands had slipped from his at a like confession.

"I've been a weak fellow from the start, Joyce. I haven't even had the courage to do a big, bad thing for myself. I've let them I loved, use me. I've lost my idea of right in my depraved craving for appreciation. That sort of sin is the worst kind. It damns one's self and makes the one you've tried to serve, hate you."

He saw that she was trying to follow him, but could not clearly, so he dropped all but brutal facts.

"When I stepped off the train at St. Ange, a few years back, I took the name of Gaston, because I dared not speak my own name, and I didn't like to go by the number that I had been known by for—five years."

"Number?" she whispered, and her frightened eyes glanced about. She was not afraid of him, but for him. Gaston saw that.

"Never fear," he reassured her; "it was all worked out. I paid that debt, but I wanted to forget the transaction. I thought I could, up here—but I reckoned without you!"

"Go on," she said hoarsely. The clock struck eleven, the logs fell apart—she was in a hurry.

"You know there is an odd little couplet that used to please me when I was—paying up. It goes like this:

Two men looked out of the prison bars, The one saw mud, the other, the stars.

"There were a lot of us who saw stars, for all the belief to the contrary; and even the mud-seers had their moments of star-vision—behind the prison bars.

"Birthdays and Christmases played the deuce with them." Gaston was off the trail now that he dared voice the memories of the past. They had so long haunted him. They might pass if he could tell them to another.

"Go on," Joyce said, impatiently glancing at the clock as if her time were short. "Please go on. It doesn't matter about that. What was before, and—and what must come, now?"

"It does matter," Gaston came back. "It was that determination of mine not to be finished by that phase of my life, that left strength in me to be halfway decent since. I only meant to regain my health up here. I meant to go back to the life I had deserted and make good before them all—but something happened."

"Yes." Gaston's face had clouded, and Joyce had to recall him.

"You see it was this way. There were a lot of people—but only four mattered. My mother, my brother, the girl and her father."

The hands under Gaston's slipped away, but he did not notice.

"My mother had a heart trouble, she could not bear much—and she always loved my brother best. He had the look and way with him that made it easy for her to prefer him. I believed the—girl cared most for me—that was what kept things going all right for a time—her father liked me best, I knew.

"I had a position of trust, the control of much money, and my head got turned, I suppose—for I felt sure of everything; myself included. Then things happened all of a sudden.

"My brother found that the girl cared for me, not him; it broke him up, and that brought on an attack of sickness for my mother. She never could bear to see him suffer. My own happiness was twisted out of shape by what I saw was to be the result of my gain over his loss.

"One night he came to me and told me that his investments had gone wrong; our mother's fortune along with the rest. A certain sum of money, right then, would tide over the critical situation.

"There was no chance but that all would come out right. He had private information that a few days would change the current. He would come out to the good—if only—"

"And you?" Joyce held him with her wide, terrified stare.

"Oh, yes! I didn't think there was any danger, and it seemed a chance to help when everything was about to come clattering around our ears. I helped. Good God, I helped!"

Gaston dropped his head on his folded arms.

"What happened when they all knew? When you explained—couldn't they help you?" Gaston flung his head back and looked at her.

"But they didn't find out. At least, they found out that I took the money—there wasn't anything else to tell. That damnable fact was enough, wasn't it? No amount of whimpering as to why I'd done it would have helped."

"But your brother?"

"He tried to get me to go away. He said in a few days all would be right. He could then save everything. I could return and repay—and—well! I wasn't made that way. I stayed."

"And—the girl?"

"She asked me if I had done it—she would believe no one else. I said yes; and that ended it. Her father tried to get me to explain—he was the Judge who was to have tried me—I refused and he begged to be released from sentencing me—that's all he could do for either of us."

"And—your—mother?" A sob rose in Joyce's throat.

"I think, even in her misery, she thanked God, since it had to be, that it was not my brother."

The room was growing cold. Joyce shivered.

"And then?" she faltered.

"Oh! then—" Gaston's face twitched, and his voice was bitter, "then came the star-gazing through the bars—and all the rest, until I came up here. Only one stuck to me through thick and thin."

"Your brother?" Joyce interrupted.

"My brother? No! Just a plain friend. I told him I did not want to hear a thing while I was shut away. I knew it would hold me back from getting what I could out of the experience. It's like hell to have the outside troubles and joys brought to you while you are bound hand and foot. I saw enough of that—it did more to keep men in the mud than anything else. I just kept that space of my life clear for expiation. When the gates opened for me one day—my friend was there with all the news in a budget.

"You see the lash that had cut deepest when I went away was something my mother said; 'You've broken the hearts of them who loved and trusted you.'

"Nothing had mattered so much as those words—and out of the disgrace, the loneliness, the misery and deadly labour, I had worked out a plan to make up to them for the wrong I had done. It was going to be about the biggest job a fellow ever undertook; but, do you know, I had hoped that I could do it?

"Well, my friend's words drove me back upon myself. There was nothing for me to do."

"Why?"

"The hearts were all mended—after a fashion, without my aid."

"Your mother?"

"She had died soon after I went away."

"And your—brother—he surely—"

"Oh! he had gone booming ahead like a rocket. The tide turned a bit too late for me—but it carried him to a safe harbour. In a generous and highly moral way he stood ready to repay me—but conditions had changed; I must accept certain terms."

"The—the—girl?"

"She'd married my brother. She it was who changed the conditions, you see. It had been a noble sacrifice for her to marry into such a family—so, of course, due consideration must be shown her. Would I live abroad on an ample allowance?"

Joyce flinched before the tone. Gaston stood up and flung his arms out. "No! by God, I would not live abroad. I chose my own place of hiding. He paid, though—I saw to that—he named no allowance, it was I; but he paid and paid and paid all that I thought he should. He bought me off at my price—not his. I left all in the hands of the only friend I had on earth—I never wanted to hear of the others again until I was ready to go back—and I haven't. I wanted time to think out my way. I wanted strength to go back, take my name and fortune, ask nothing of the world—but a chance to defy it. I got as far as that—" He dropped back into the chair and bowed his head.

The hands of the clock were past midnight, the fire was nothing but glowing embers; a chill was creeping through the room. Presently Gaston was aware of a nearness—not merely bodily, but spiritually. He looked up. He had forgotten Joyce and his thought of comfort in knowing that she would stand by him. To see her close now, to gaze up into her glorious face was like an awakening from a hideous dream to a safe reality.

"You got as far as that," she said in the saddest, softest tone that a woman's voice ever held; "and then I came into your life. Oh! how hard you tried to set me aside with Jude—but again and again I returned to—hold you back."

"Why, Joyce, what is the matter?"

A paralyzing fear drove anguish before it. Gaston strove to recall passion, but that, too, had deserted. He and Joyce were standing in a barren place alone—nothing behind, nothing before!

"Can't you see what is the matter?"

The coquetry had left the girl, she stood fair, cold and passive like some wonderful goddess.

"Don't you think I see it all now?

"When I came out of that room I was a—bad woman! You were mistaken, I never understood before—about us!

"You see when—when I came to you that night—after Jude—" she struggled with her trembling—"I did not know such men as you—lived. I was what Jude and St. Ange had made me. I was afraid of you—but," she bent over him in divine pity pressing her wet cheek to his bowed head; "but I grew to know! You were far, far above me, I soon saw how far. You never thought about it, but it made it safe for you to help me. I can see it all so plain now.

"Then the evil that was in me, the evil that some might have made so vile, slipped away. I tried hard to be what you wanted me to be for my own sake. You did not think of the past and I tried to forget it, too; and so we came along to this night.

"In that room"—she looked quiveringly at the closed door—"for a moment, I misunderstood again. I thought you were trifling with me. I think I felt for the first time that perhaps I was not what I had been—when I came out of the old life! I wanted to make sure, and I stooped to the meanest way."

Gaston drew her close. Vaguely he feared that she was slipping farther and farther from him for all her sweetness and nearness.

"Joyce!" he cried wildly. "You are not going to desert me—now?"

She dropped beside him and clasped her hands over his knee. There was no need of reserve, she knew that better than he.

"Can you not see what sort of man you are?" she asked fiercely; while the tears fell thick and fast.

"Oh! I love you many, many ways. I can tell you this now and you must not stop me. I love you for them who left you alone to suffer. I love you just for myself, and I love you as I would have loved my poor baby had God let me keep him. And that is the best way of all, for it holds all other loves.

"Oh, you must see! You shall see! The men out in your world—could any of them have done what you have done—for me? Even Mr. Drew could not understand. Even he thought you must have harmed me—he felt sorry for me! And knowing what I know, do you, could any of those others, think I would let you harm—yourself?

"You have made me a stronger woman than even you tried to make me, and I thank God for that—for you need me so very, very much!"

The deep sobs choked her, and she buried her head against his arm. Out of a desolation her words were creating, Gaston spoke desperately.

"I do need you, and by heaven, I mean to have you!"

"You're right. I did not know what you meant to me; I know now, and since Fate has played us false, we'll—we'll turn our backs on her."

"Joyce, are you willing to—trust me?"

Almost roughly he raised her face and forced her to look at him.

"I—trust you! You could never be anything but good and noble. I know that. You never have been—but, there are going to be other days and nights—just plain days and long black nights—and—I think we have almost forgotten—but there is always—Jude!"

Then like a bewildering flash the words lightened the dark place of Gaston's character.

This woman whom—he saw the fearful truth—this woman whom he had helped to form, had outgrown him and left him far behind!

Now that she understood; now that her womanhood could stand alone, she rose pure and strong above his passion and the thing he called love. She only thought he had forgotten, when God knew he did not even care for the rough fellow who had all but strangled the life out of her.

"Besides"—he heard her as from a distance—"besides, you must go back!"

"Go back—good God! to what?"

"To all that you had to go back to—when you turned to help me!"

Then Gaston bent and raised the shrinking woman beside him. Face to face they stood in the cold, still room. "Joyce," he said thickly, "what I am going to say—you may never be able to forgive—but I must say it.

"It is quite true, I gave no thought to what I was doing when I shielded you from Jude. St. Ange did not matter; there seemed no other way—and I never considered others coming to complicate things.

"I was miserable and lonely; but I felt sure of myself and in helping you I found an interest in life. Lately, almost unconsciously, I've felt the change in you—the new meaning. I wanted to make sure and then be guided, since others had entered this—this fool's paradise of mine. You are very beautiful—the most beautiful woman, I think, that I have ever seen—and I know now that you are—the best!

"Joyce—your beauty crazed me, and I had not forgotten Jude; I did not care!"

"Stop!" The little cold hand was pressed against his lips, "you shall not! It was I who tempted you—you would have remembered—everything. It is you who must forgive me—I am going—now!"

The slow, pitiful words fell lingeringly.

"Going—where can you go?" Gaston stared dumbly at her.

"I think Mr. Drew will help me. I am going to tell him everything—and he will—find a way."

"You shall not!" Gaston drew her to his breast. The primitive rose within him.

"There is another way. The only way. Drew shall not meddle in my affairs—nor yours. You will stay right here in your home until I return. I'm going to Filmer; he's the only one we need, he'll act for us both."

"But—what then?" Joyce felt her heart stand still.

"Then? why I'm going to find Jude. I'm going to buy him off—if necessary. He shall free you—and then—then!"

Gaston held the pale face off from him and searched the wide, startled eyes.

"And then?" The words fell into a question.

"But how"—Joyce panted; "how could I feel sure this great thing you plan is not another—unselfish act? Suppose, oh! suppose—she, that—that other girl—should come back—what then?"

"Hear me, Joyce. There is never going to be any one else. We are going back together—into that other life. Why, the possibility almost blinds me.

"They shall see what I've brought out of my experience. We'll make a place for ourselves and redeem the past. They shall seek us, my darling, and they shall see at last that I am master of my life!"

His enthusiasm and exaltation carried Joyce along with him.

"Dare I trust—not you—but myself?" she whispered. "After everything is said—I am—what I am!"

"Yes—you are what you are!" Gaston pressed his lips against her trembling mouth. "And now, good-bye!" he released her, and led her toward her door. "I must make a few preparations—then get to Filmer. It's all very wonderful, but it is more true than wonderful. Until I come, then—and it may take time, dear—you will remember?"

"Always—until you come—and after!"

Gaston bent again, but this time he only pressed his lips to the soft, pale hair.

When the door closed behind her; he stood for a moment dazed and bewildered. Mechanically he turned to the first task that lay at hand. He rebuilt the dead fire. It seemed symbolic, somehow, and he smiled. Then holding to the fancy that touched him, he piled on log after log.

There should be no lack of warmth and glow in the new reincarnation.

An hour later he left the house, with the needful things for his possible, long absence packed in a grip and flung across his shoulder.

He had attended to so many small comforts for Joyce—the fire, the writing out of directions, where to find money, etc.—that he had been hurried in the details of his own affairs; he had forgotten to take the key from the lock of the chest!



CHAPTER XIII

Jock Filmer was coming to the belief that there was a Destiny shaping his ends roughly, smooth-hew them as he had ever tried to do. Jock was pursued, there was no doubt of that. For reasons of his own he had drifted into St. Ange when very young. Most conveniently and soothingly memory and old habits dropped from him—they had clung tenaciously to Gaston. Jock adapted himself to circumstances and new environment with flattering promptness.

The Black Cat felt no resentment toward him after the first few months. His English became blurred with regard to grammar; the local speech was good enough for him. When Jock's Past became troublesome, as it had done from the very first, the Black Cat had consolation for its latest recruit; and, while he did not sink quite so far as some of the natives, the shortcoming was attributed more to youth than to the putting on of airifications, as Tate said.

In a boyish, off-hand way, Filmer had always regarded Gaston as a sign-board in an unexplored country. If things ever pressed too close, Filmer believed Gaston would point him to safety.

A mystic something held them together. A common interest, consciously cast into oblivion, but perfectly tangible and not to be denied, was the unspoken passport in their intercourse.

Later, during the building of Drew's bungalow and their joint sympathy for, and with, Joyce, Filmer had acknowledged Gaston, as a superior and, spiritually, regarded him as a leader in an interesting adventure.

Gaston, the night when he faced Jude and him with the pointed question, "What you going to do about it?" had fallen from Jock's high opinion, and the crash had affected him to a painful extent.

"Oh! what's the good?" he had finally concluded.

Another friendship that had been formed in the lonely woods yet remained to him, and he made the most of that. Drew's personality had stirred Jock's emotions from the start. To look forward to a renewal of the companionship was a distinct pleasure in the time when the dust of Gaston's fallen image was blinding his eyes and smarting his heart.

Drew came, sick but unconquered. All the chivalry in Filmer rose to the call. He gave his time to the young minister. Using up the little money he had earned as builder, resigning his chance to go into camp, he devoted himself to Drew day and night. He became one of the family at the bungalow and a jocose familiarity was as much a part of Jock's liking for a person, as were his tireless patience and capacity for single-minded service.

Drew's maiden aunt, prim, proper and worldly-wise, was as much Aunt Sally to Filmer as she was to her niece and nephew. Jock jollied the aristocratic lady as freely as he did Drew, toward whom he held the tolerant admiration that he had given him from the beginning. But poor Jock was not to have his own easy planning of the new situation in all directions. Constance Drew took a hand in the game, and Jock, with trailing plume, plodded on behind her.

If he could gibe and tease, she could bring him about with her cool audacity and comical dignity.

The girl's splendid physique, her athletic tendencies, her endurance and pluck, compelled Jock's masculine admiration. Her love for her brother, her tenderness and cheerfulness toward him, won his heart; but her mental make-up, her strange seriousness where her own private interests were concerned, caused the young fellow no end of amusement and delight. He had never seen any one in the least like her, and the new sensation held him captive.

Poor Jock! He was never again to walk through life without a chain and ball; but little he heeded that while he had strength and spirit to drag them.

With Drew's partial recovery the bungalow household lost its head a little. Aunt Sally's gratitude overflowed into every house in St. Ange. She felt as if the natives, not the pine-laded air, had been instrumental in this regained health and joyousness.

"I can never thank you enough," was her constant greeting; and so sincere was her gratitude that eventually the back doors of the squalid houses opened to her unconsciously—and of true friendship there is no greater proof in a primitive village. Sitting in their kitchens, it was easy for her to reach down into their hearts, and many a St. Ange woman poured her troubles into Aunt Sally's ears, and went forever after with uplifted head.

"Why, my dear," the old lady said to Ralph, after Peggy Falstar had taken her into her confidence, "these people are much like others, only they have the rough bark on. They are a great deal more vital—the bark has, somehow, kept the sap richer."

Drew laughed heartily.

"The polishing takes something away, Auntie," he replied. "The bark is hard to get through; it's tough and prickly and not always lovely, but it's the sap that counts in every case, and that's what I used to tell you and Connie. Every time I tapped these people up here, I saw and felt the rich possibilities."

"Now, you go straight to sleep," his aunt always commanded at that juncture.

She was not yet able to face the probability of a final settlement in these backwoods, but she saw with alarm that her nephew was planting his hopes deep and accepting the inevitable.

"It's all such a horrible sacrifice of his young life," she confided to Constance.

"His young life!" the girl had returned with a straight, clear look. "Why, I begin to think the only life he has, Auntie, is what St. Ange offers—he must take that or nothing. Oh! if only that little beast down there in New York had had the courage of a mouse, and the imagination of a mole, she might have made Ralph's life—this life—a thing to go thundering down into history! It's splendid up here! It's the sort of thing that makes your soul feel like something tangible. My!" And with that, on a certain mid-winter day, the young woman strode forth.

A long fur-lined coat protected her from the deceiving cold. The dryness of the air was misleading to a coast-bred girl. A dark red hood covered the ruddy, curly hair, and skin gloves gave warm shelter to the slim, white hands.

Down the snow-covered road Constance walked. She was tingling with the joy of her life—her life and the dear, new life given to her brother.

The pines pointed darkly to a sky so faultlessly blue that it seemed a June heirloom to a white winter.

The snow was crisp and smooth; a durable snow that must last until spring. It knew its business and what was expected of it, so it was not to be impressed by mere footsteps, or the touch of prowling beast.

Constance slid and tripped along. She sang snatches of old, remembered songs, and talked aloud for very fulness of heart and the sense of her Mission rising strong within her.

Since coming to St. Ange she had not, until now, had time to think of her Mission—her last Mission;—for Constance Drew was a connoisseur in Missions. But now she must waste no more time.

She patted her long pocket on the right-hand side—yes, the book and an assorted lot of pencils were there. She preferred pencils to fountain pens. The points were nicer to bite on, and she wasn't sure, in this climate, but that ink might freeze just when a soul-flight was about to land genius on a mountain-top.

There was a beautiful log halfway between the bungalow and Gaston's shack. It was a sheltered log, with a delectable hump on it where one could rest the base of one's spinal column when victory, in the form of inspiration, was about to perch.

Constance sought this log when long, ambitious thoughts possessed her. The snow had been removed, and a cushion of moss, also bare of snow, made a resting place for two small feet, warmly incased in woollen-lined "arctics."

Constance sat down and drew the red-covered book from her pocket, and placed the seven sharply-pointed pencils, side by side and near at hand.

A sound startled the girl. Her brow puckered. Even in the deep woods inspiration was not safe from intrusion.

Well, since some bothering person must take this time for appearing, Constance hoped it would be Joyce, for she wanted to see her and talk with her. Joyce did not invite intimacy. Up there alone in her shack, waiting for Gaston's return, she was grappling with matters too sacred and agonizing to permit of curious interruption. That Drew's family should overlook any little social shortcoming in her and seek to meet her on an equal footing, did not interest her in the least—she wanted to be alone, and for the most part she was.

But it was not Joyce who appeared on the road. It was Jock Filmer and he came, without invitation, to the log and put his foot on the end nearest the girl.

"Pleasant summer weather, hey?"

Constance raised her eyes from the little book in which she had been writing, and gave Jock the benefit of her honest inspection.

"If you had ever lived where winter was meted out to you in the form of frozen moisture," she said, "you'd know how to appreciate this nice, clean, undisguised cold."

"I know the other kind." Jock nodded reminiscently. "It is like being slapped in the face with a sheet wet with ice water, isn't it?"

"Ha! ha! so you haven't always lived here? I thought as much. Indeed I have a note to that effect—here." The girl tapped the red-covered book.

"No; I've travelled some," Jock confessed, "I've been to Hillcrest several times."

"I believe you are masquerading." Constance viewed him keenly. "I've written to my married sister about you all up here; I call you and that—that Mr. Gaston, the Masqueraders."

"So!" Jock smoothed his chin with his heavily gloved hand. "That sister of yours, doubtlessly, could spot us all on sight just by your description. It ain't safe. How's your aunt and the Reverend Kid?" Jock grinned amiably. The past weeks had given him time and opportunity for broadening his views of life and enjoyment.

"Ralph is fine"; the clear, gray eyes shone with the joy of the fact; "and Auntie is having the time of her life. You know she never had her lighter vein developed. Our city connection is awfully proper and cultivated. I always knew auntie was a Bohemian, and up here—she's plunging!"

"Umph! And you?"

"Oh! I'm getting—material."

"Excuse me." Jock passed his hand over his mouth. "There are times when I think you're a comicaller little cuss than your brother!"

"Mr. Filmer!"

"Oh, come down! Mr. Filmer don't go in the woods in the middle of winter. What do you want for your Christmas?"

"When you make fun of me"—the girl was trying hard not to laugh—"you anger me beyond—expression."

A guffaw greeted this. Then:

"What was you making in your little book when I came up?"

"Character sketches."

"Sho! Let's have a look. I like pictures."

"They're pen-pictures."

"All the same to me. Pencil, pen, or paint-brush."

"But you do not understand. They are word pictures. Descriptions, you know."

"Well, now you have got me! Show up, anyhow."

Constance opened the little book, and spread it out on her knee.

"I am getting material for a novel," she said impressively. "The great American novel has yet to be written. I do not want you to think me conceited, Jock, but I have had exceptional advantages—I may be the chosen one to write this—this great novel."

"Who knows?" Jock's serious gaze was a perfect disguise for his true inward state.

"Yes; who knows? You see I can speak freely to you."

"Sure thing," assented Jock. "Dumb animals can't blab, and once you turn your back on St. Ange I'll be a dumb beast all right!"

"My back will never be turned permanently on St. Ange, I think!" the girl spoke slowly. "I agree with Ralph that for the future his home will probably be here; and where Ralph is——"

"The lamb will surely come. Go on, child, and hang up your pictures." They both laughed now.

"First," Constance folded her hands over the open pages of her book, "I wonder, Jock, if you would like to hear—something of my life? It would explain this—this—great ambition of mine."

"Well," Jock drawled, "if you don't think me too young and innocent for such excitement, fire away. Histories have always had a hold on me. Most of 'em ain't true, but they tickle your imagination."

"Jock! But I'm in earnest. I have felt that I must have a confidant. Some one who will—sympathize. I'm going to have a woman friend in a day or so—but a man—one who is disinterested, so to speak, is always such a comfort to a girl when she faces a great epoch in her life."

Jock swallowed his rising mirth and his face became a blank so far as expression was concerned.

"I have had wonderful advantages," Constance began, "that is what makes me dare to hope. Advantages of wealth, society and—and a deep insight into people's innermost souls."

"Gosh!" Jock exploded; "excuse me; I always burst out that way when I'm—moved." He sat down on the end of the log, and clutched his knees in his strong arms. "Somehow you don't look like such a desperate character," he added blandly, "known sin and conquered it, and all the rest?"

Constance sniffed, but a little jocularity was not going to deter her from the luxury of confession.

"Money should only be regarded," she went on, "as a sacred trust, and a means of enriching one's life. And as for Society—that is a bore! Dances, theatres, dinners and luncheons. Chaperons tagging around after you, suggesting by their mere presence that, unless you're watched, you'll do something desperate in the wild desire to break the monotony. Well, I drank deep of that life," Constance looked dreamily over the stretch of meadow and pine-edged woods, all dazzling with a shimmer of icy snow, "before I took to——"

"Crime?" Jock suggested. "It would seem that that was the natural sequence to such a career."

"Jock Filmer—I took to philanthropy."

"As bad as that?" Jock roared with laughter.

"I only tell you this to explain my present position." Constance drew her fur-clad shoulders up. "I became a Settlement worker; but," confidently, "that was worse than Society. It was Society with another setting. 'Thanks be!' as Auntie says, I have a sense of humour and a remnant of Scotch canniness. It made me laugh—when it didn't make me ashamed—to put on a sort of livery—plain frock, you know, and go down to the Settlement in the most businesslike way to 'do' for those poor people. It cost an awful lot to run our Settlement, about two-thirds of all the money. One-third went to the poor. We had plenty of fun down there. All slummy outside and lovely things inside, you know. It was like making believe. You see," she paused impressively, "when you have a Mission like Settlement work, you don't have to have a chaperon."

"Ten to one, they're needed, though." Jock was keenly interested. "Cutting loose from familiar ties and acting up sort of detached that way, must have a queer effect upon some."

"Well, I just got enough of it. Why, one Christmas, we at the Settlement House had a tree and gifts that cost hundreds of dollars. We had a big dance. Evening dress and all the rest. Young men and women who, had they been in their own homes, would have been under some one's watchful eye, were having a jolly, good fling down there that Christmas Eve, I can tell you.

"Right in the middle of the evening, a call came from a family in a tenement around the corner. I knew all about them—or I thought I did—so I went. I just flung a cloak about me and ran off alone. Somehow I did not want any one with me."

Constance's eyes grew dim, and her under lip quivered.

"It was awful." Her voice sank low. "You see, with all the preparations going on at the Settlement House, we had sort of forgotten this—this family. They were not the noisy, begging kind, but there was a pitiful, little sick girl whom I had taken a liking to and to think that I should have forgotten her—and at that time, too! There was no tree in that home, Jock, there was nothing much, but the little dying girl and her mother.

"They didn't even blame me—oh, if they only had!" The honest tears ran down Constance's cheeks. "But they didn't. The mother said—and she apologized for troubling me, think of that!—that the baby wanted me to tell her a Christmas story. She just wouldn't go to sleep until I did, and she had been ailing all day. I—I forgot my dress, and tore off my cloak in that cold, empty room and I took that poor baby in my arms. Then—then the hardest part came—she—she didn't know me. She got the queerest little notion in her baby head—she—she thought I was an—angel. Oh! oh! and I wanted her to know me."

Down went the girlish head in the open pages of the character sketches.

"Well of all gol-durned nonsense!" Jock blurted out. "The whole blamed show oughter been exposed. I reckon the best job the company ever had to its credit was that happening of yours—the dress and the—the—rest of the picter. Lord!" Jock's feelings were running over as he looked upon the bowed head. The story had got hold of his tender heart. "Lord above! Just think of that sort of rum suffering going on back there. It's worse than what happens here. We've got wood to keep the kids warm in winter, and there's clean air and coolness in summer. I'm durned glad I cut it when"—he stopped short. Constance was looking at him with wide, questioning eyes.

"When I did," Jock added helplessly. "And now go on with that poor little child what you took to your bosom."

"That's all." Constance choked painfully. "The baby—died while I was telling her about the wonderful tree, and Santa Claus and the other joys she should have had, and never did have. I can see that hideous empty room, and—and that poor baby every time I shut my eyes."

"Here, look up now," Jock commanded, his feelings getting the best of him. "When life's so empty that you can't find things to do by opening your eyes, you better keep your eyes shut to all eternity. Calling up the past is the rottenest kind of folly in a world where things is happening."

Constance rallied to the stern call.

"And now," she said briskly, "I've given myself, heart and soul to—literature. I'll write of what I have seen, and lived!

"Listen, I'll read you a sketch or so. But first I'll explain. The local colour of my novel is drawn from—here."

Jock pulled himself together.

"Well, I'll be blowed!" he sympathetically ejaculated, "Here where there ain't, what you might say, enough local color to more than touch up the noses of the Black Catters."

"Jock! Now, see if you'd know it." She read a scrappy description of the village. "Would you recognize it?"

"With a footnote, it would go." Jock was all attention. "But I have my doubts as to whether Pete Falstar will take kindly to his place of residence being classified as a human pig-sty. That's laying the local colour on, with a whitewash brush, don't you think? A little dirt and disorder don't seem to call for such language."

"That is artistic license." Constance explained.

"Well, you ought to pay high for that kind of license—but maybe you do. Go on."

"I handle my subject without gloves," Constance began again.

"By gosh! I'd keep 'em on when I was tackling pig-stys and such; but don't mind me."

"And here; see if you can guess who this is?

"'The sleek, fat proprietor looked oily within and oily without. He oozed oil on the community that he was demoralizing with his poisonous whiskey and doctored beer.'"

"God bless and save us!" Jock rolled from side to side. "If you don't beat all for gol-durned sass. Why, Tate will sue you for damages if that great American novel ever strikes his vision. Oil! Thunderation; and poisonous whiskey, and doctored beer. Was it Society or Settlement what let light in on you, about such terms?"

"Neither. It's—inspiration."

"It's just plain imperdence, and it'll get you in trouble. Are you going to use names in that novel of yours?"

"Certainly not. Do you think I do not know my art? But you recognize Tate? Then he lives!"

"Good Lord! Know him? How under the everlasting firmament could I help knowing him? What other proprietor is there in St. Ange, you comical little bag of words? specially one as demoralizes the community with poisoned whiskey and doctored beer? Balls of fire! but this beats the band. Go on; go on."

When a man of thirty steps out of a starved exile and comes in contact with a girl like Constance Drew, it may be dangerous to "go on," but the exile will certainly want to.

Nothing loath; all sparkling and radiant, Constance swept along.

"And I've got—you, but maybe you will never forgive me. I took you at your—your worst—for don't you see when I use you—later—I'm going to redeem you and have you come out truly splendid."

Jock's jaw dropped, and the laugh fled from his overflowing eyes.

"Me?" he gasped. Constance nodded, and waved a pointed pencil toward him.

"Wait!" she ran her eye down the page. "'Beautiful woman—with a—Past'—that's the girl up in the other Masquerader's shack, that girl Joyce, you know, and Gaston—and here's Peggy Falstar—'woman sunk to man's level and reproducing her kind'—brief note of Billy Falstar as 'impish child'—oh! here you are!

"'Village Bacchus. Tall, handsome, but lost, apparently, to shame. Swaggering criss-cross down the road, laughing senselessly and shouting songs. Slave to appetite. Controlled by his brutal passions. When spoken to in this state, assumes manner of gentleman. Subconscious self—study in heredity.—Let a strong influence enter his life—handsome noble girl—redemption at end—splendid character.'"

"Good God!"

Constance dropped the book. The eyes that met her own had a look in them that drove the cold, which she had not felt before, to her very heart.

"What—what—is the matter?" she gasped.

"Did you—ever see me—like that?" The words came hoarsely.

"Yes. One day a few weeks ago. Ralph wanted you. I went to find you—and"—the girl's eyes dropped. She felt a sudden humiliation as if he had detected her reading his private letters.

"And I talked—rot and all the rest?"

"Yes. I never told Ralph; I knew it would hurt him—I had—no right to tell you this—it is only—copy for me."

"Copy?"

"Yes; stuff to work into the—novel."

"The novel? Ah, I remember. I'm going to be stuffed in with Tate and—and the others?"

"Yes; but don't you recall, you are to be redeemed—you are to be my—my hero—in the end you are to be—splendid."

A deep groan was the only reply to this; the groan and the look of growing misery on the man's face.

"You're to go back—you see I feel you once belonged somewhere else—and take up your life-work with——"

"With?" Jock repeated the word hopelessly.

"With her—the girl."

"What girl?"

"Why the girl I'm going to create. First I thought I'd have her—Joyce; but that doesn't stand clear in my thought—I cannot quite see just the sort of girl—that could rouse you to—to great things."

Filmer was staring at the speaker with dazed and pitiful eyes. Then Constance beheld a miracle. The stony misery melted as an infinite sadness and pity overflowed.

Jock stood up, plunged his hands in his pockets and looked down at the dissecter who had bared every sensitive nerve in his heart and soul.

"When—you write that book," the words drawled out the bitter thought, "just omit—me—please—if you have any mercy."

"Jock!" Constance sprang to her feet. "Jock—how could I know that you would care?"

"You—couldn't, of course."

"Is it because I saw you so?"

"No."

"You know of course—that I'd never speak of that to any one—I only used it for my book."

"If that will help your book—take it; but leave out——"

"What?"

"The girl—the redemption—and——"

"Why?"

"Can't you—guess?"

"No." But as the word passed her lips, she did guess—and what she surmised sent the blood rushing through her body.

"Don't be frightened, Miss Drew," Filmer was getting command of himself; "there isn't going to be any redemption; nor any girl—that's all; don't you see? There never is in such cases, and you want to be true to life in that first, great American novel. You got your brush in the wrong pot of local colour when you daubed me. No offence intended, or taken, I hope. God bless you! strike your pencil through all that came after the spree part. You're welcome to that, but I decline to let you ruin your reputation by offering up the rest to the public."

He was laughing again, and the agony had passed from his careless face.

"And now?" he asked, "which way?"

"I'm going—home."

"Well, well, come along. I'm bound for the Reverend Kid myself. I've got his mail in my pockets—and yours, too by thunder! You're too diverting, Miss Drew, you took my thoughts off business. Come on."



CHAPTER XIV

Joyce, waiting in the solitude of the shack under the pines, heard and saw little of what was going on in St. Ange. She was living at high pressure, and she had not even the relief of companionship to divert her from her lonely vigils.

Naturally the exhilaration of the night that Gaston left her, passed and the dull monotony of the daily tasks performed perfunctorily with no charm of another's approbation and sharing, lost the power of holding her thoughts.

She ate, and made tidy the little house in quite the old way, but the large dreaming eyes looked beyond the narrow confines, and grew pathetic as they searched the white fields and hidden trails off toward the Northern and Southern Solitudes.

Which way had he gone? From which direction would he return? Everything was ready for him—it always had been since the night he left—and she, herself, once the daily routine was over, donned her prettiest garments, not the golden gown! and waited either by the glowing fire or by the little windows.

Early in the day following Gaston's departure, she had discovered the key in the lock of the chest! The sight for a moment, made her tremble.

Had he left it by mistake? Had he left it designedly, now that he had taken her completely into his confidence?

But had he? Joyce flushed and paled at the thought. After all, what had he really told her? She did not know, even, his true name nor the place from which he had come.

No; she knew very little. Shaken from his indifference by her beauty and charm into a realizing sense of the woman he had helped to form, Gaston had indeed broken his silence and voiced the one great tragedy of his life to her—and she had superbly stood the test; but that was all!

In the chest lay, perhaps the rest! His name; the name of those who had taken part in all that had gone before the terrible time of his trouble. For a moment a paralyzing temptation came to Joyce to solve for herself, by the means at hand, the mystery which still surrounded the man she loved with a completeness and abandon that controlled every thought and act of her life. But it was only a momentary weakness. Her love shielded her from any shortcoming that could possibly lower her.

Bravely she walked up to the chest, and proved herself by trying the lid to see if the chest were unlocked. It was. Gaston had not even taken that precaution.

Joyce smiled—all was now safe with her. She would never feel tempted again. It became a comfort to sit near the chest. She deserted the living room and made a huge fire upon Gaston's hearth. Evenings she took her book or sewing there, and the chest with its secrets seemed like a friend who, from very nearness of comradeship, had no need to speak its hidden thoughts.

In the desolation of the mid-winter loneliness, the pale woman grew to feel, when in Gaston's room, a high courage and strength. Everything would come out right. Details were not to be considered. Gaston had always been all-powerful; he would conquer now. What did the waiting count? He, meanwhile, was tracing Jude. Soon he would return, having freed her from every evil thing of the past. He would find her as he had left her—a woman fitted by a great love to follow whither he led.

And then—as the long evenings pressed silently cold and dark around the shack, her fancy ran riot. All that she had yearned for; all, all that the books had suggested, she was to see. Mountain peaks and roaring ocean; strange people like, yet so unlike, Gaston. To think that all this was going to happen to her—old Jared's little Joyce.

A few days after Gaston's departure Jock Filmer walked into the shack quite as easily as if months had not passed without a sight of him; he came almost daily afterward. It was like Jock to assume the new relation in this easy, companionable way.

Joyce was grateful. This was but another proof of Gaston's greatness.

"Everything going straight, Joyce?" The question came one day while the keen eyes were taking in the store of wood, water and other necessaries.

"Everything, Jock; and the store-room is stocked. Sit down—and tell me the news."

Joyce was not particularly interested, but it would put Jock at ease.

Jock gracefully flung himself into Gaston's chair. The two were, of course, in the living room.

"There's company up to the bungalow," he spoke from the fullness of his heart; "a widder girl."

"A—a widow?" Joyce was for a moment perplexed.

"Yes. She don't look a day older than Drew's sister, and she's powerful cheerful for an afflicted person. But maybe she ain't afflicted. They ain't, always. She looks as if she was dressing up in them togs for fun, and at first glimpse it strikes one as sacrilegious. Something like a kid using holy words in its play."

Joyce smiled. After all it was good to have the dear human touch, even if the vital spark were lacking.

"Is—the widow-girl pretty, Jock?" she asked in order to detain Filmer.

"Well," a line came between Jock's eyes, "that's the puzzler. Now Drew's sister—" Jock spoke in this detached way of Constance Drew for self-defense—"Drew's sister stands for what she is; a good, honest, handsome girl. You own up to that and that's the end of it. This one sets you thinking. Is she, or ain't she pretty? you keep putting to yourself. Do you like her, or don't you? Is she thinking about what you're saying, or ain't she? That's the way your mind works when you are with her, till it seems a plain waste of time, and riles you way down to the ground. I like a woman what, having passed up her personality, lets you alone as to further guessing 'less you have a mind to guess. Joyce!"

"Yes, Jock."

"They want you up to the bungalow to help along with the Christmas doings. I never saw such happenings in all my life. All St. Ange is going to see what's what for once. Presents for everybody; big party at the bungalow Christmas night; the overflow is going even to reach up to the camps. Boxes and barrels arriving every day from down the State. Lord, but you should see Tom Smith's curiosity! There are big doings. They call it a kind of thanksgiving for the Reverend Kid's recovery; and they want you."

Joyce started back. She was interested, but only as it was apart from herself.

"Oh, Jock!" she cried. "I couldn't. I just couldn't."

"I thought you couldn't," Jock returned calmly; "and you shan't if you don't want to."

"Thank you. Don't let them feel hurt, but I could not go."

Jock cast a sympathetic glance toward her; and changed the subject.

"It's wonderful the grip that weak little Reverend has already got on this town," he went on. "He's a sly one. Preaching ain't in it with the undercurrent he's let loose here. It's just sapping the foundations of society. It's setting free a lot of good stuff, but it's striking Tate an all-fired blow."

"Tell me about it, Jock. It seems as if I had been asleep a—long while."

"Well there are sermons and sermons." Jock was flattered by the look in Joyce's large eyes. "If the Reverend Kid had opened shop in the regular way, Tate and his pals would have downed him in no time; but what you going to do about sermons that are slipped in with talks to women over their wash-tubs, and what not?

"Him and me was going by Falstar's the other day, and Peggy was washing uncommon hard. Drew, he steps close to the tubs and says he, 'I tell you, Mrs. Falstar, I don't know no better religion than getting the spots out instead of slighting them. It's like the little Scotch girl who said she knew when she got religion, for she had to sweep under the mats.' Peggy was all a-grin, and Lord! how she went at it. Later, she attacked the mats. It had set her thinking. I saw 'em hanging out, and she beating them as she must often feel like beating Pete." A real laugh greeted this, and Jock glowed with approval.

"And then what does that young lunger do, but gather in all the floating population in the kid line, and play games with 'em, and read thrillers to 'em up at the bungalow every evening. He's teaching them as wants to learn, too. He's got Tate flamgasted. You see, the old man depended, for the future, on them youngsters that haunted the tavern and got the drippings that fell from within. The Black Cat Tavern Kindergarten is busted, and the Bungalow stock is going up."

"Kindergarten? What's that, Jock?"

"Oh, it's a new-fangled idea in the way of schools. Sort of breaking up the ground for later planting."

"Who told you about it?"

"Why—Drew's sister." Jock's face looked stern and he gazed into space.

"It's a splendid idea, Jock." Joyce's interest was keen enough now. "Some one, even St. Ange's folks, should have seen how fine it is to keep the children away from the tavern. How we have let everything drift! Why Jock, if the boys and girls learn to hate the Black Cat; if they are given something good, why of course St. Ange is going to be another kind of place. Does Miss Drew help in teaching?"

"Does she?" Poor Jock smiled pitifully in his effort to appear unconcerned. "They sit at her feet lost to everything but what she tells 'em. Billy Falstar, before he left to be a camp fiddler, was a reformed brat. She had smote him hip and thigh, and finished him, as far as a career of crime is concerned. Do you know, he went up to see her with his red hair plastered down with lard until it was a dull maroon colour; his square cotton handkercher was perfumed with kerosene, and I tell you he was a sight and a smell to remember; but Drew's sister stood it without a word. She told me afterward that it was a proof conclusive—them's her words—of Billy's redemption.

"I saw the brat the day he started for camp. I tell you the ginger was all out of Billy. When he was obliged to swear he did it in whispers."

"Poor Billy! He's pretty young to begin camp life. There's good in Billy. I wish Mr. Drew would make Peter send him to school."

"That's what he's planning to do."

Soon after this, when Jock started to go, he said: "So everything's fit for a spell?"

"Everything Jock, until—"

They looked at each other mutely. Then Jock put his hand out awkwardly and took Joyce's.

"Good-bye," he said quietly. His manner puzzled the girl.

"Life's a queer jamboree," he laughed lightly. "It's a heap easier to stand it if you give yourself the hope of cutting it if you find the pace too fast. So 'good-bye' is always in order even if you're going to drop in to-morrow. Good-bye."

Joyce walked with him to the door. "Good-bye," she said with a growing doubt in her heart; "good-bye, Jock—and I can never tell you how I thank you."

It was many a long day before Joyce was to see Filmer again, and she always felt that she knew it as she saw him pass beyond the pines after that "good-bye."

* * * * *

Perhaps it was the boyish longing for Christmas cheer that struck such a deadly blow at the heart of Billy, the fiddler, in Camp 7. Perhaps it was the arrow that smites all, sooner or later. Be that as it may, as Christmas drew near the mournful tunes Billy managed to saw from his fiddle got on to the nerves of the men.

From remarks aimed at his efforts, pieces of wood and articles of clothing were aimed at him, and Billy's life became a burden in the dull, deep woods.

"I can't make jigs come," he whined one evening, "when I'm chock full of hymn tunes."

"You'll be chock full of cold lead if you fill this hull camp with them death dirges," warned one man who was bearing about all he could anyway.

"I wish to—I just wish I was plugged full of lead—and done for," was Billy's unlooked-for reply; and then, to the surprise of all, he bent his red curls over the fiddle and wept as only a homesick youngster can weep when the barriers of his fourteen years are down, and the flood has its way.

That night, Billy in his bunk, sleepless and consumed with longing for home and the excitement of the bungalow element, planned desertion. At midnight he crept to the larder and packed enough food to last for a couple of days, at four o'clock he stole from the sleeping-shed, and, cheered by the unanimous snores that rang in his ears, he turned his freckled, determined face toward St. Ange and the one absorbing passion of his life.

The outlook of the Solitude at four in the morning was not an altogether cheerful one even to ambitious youth. Indeed there was little, if any, outlook.

Blackness around; cold starlight overhead. Snow and ice everywhere except on the trail that a "V" plow had made through the forest.

It was cruelly still and lonely. "Gawd," said Billy raising his eyes to the emptiness above him, "you see me to the end of this, and, by gosh! I'll swear to go to Hillcrest to school."

From irreligious depravity, Billy had risen to reverent heights, and Hillcrest restraint was beautiful in his thought, as a method of preparing him for—Her.

A fear he had never known had birth in Billy's heart then as he slipped and slid down the icy trail that had been flooded and frozen for the passage of the logs. Even his unprotected boyhood had been shielded from four-o'clock journeys in the wintry woods heretofore.

The only help Billy could draw from the situation was, that so far he could refrain from whistling. When in this tense state a boy is reduced to whistling all hope for strength is gone.

A distant groan; swish! ah! ah! and crash! rent the stillness. The boy drew his breath in sharp.

"D—— blast that tree!" gurgled he, "what did it have to fall for now?"

Suddenly a deer darted across the trail and turned its wondering eyes on the small brother of the woods. Billy's spirits rose. The wild things were friends. The boy's depravity had always been redeemed by a lack of cruelty.

A little farther on the way, Billy seated himself on a fallen log, and cheered his inner man by a "bite of breakfast." Presently a shy, wild creature drew near; took note and courage and scurried to Billy's feet. With generous hand the boy shared his early meal, and made a familiar noise that further won the little animal's confidence.

Billy had his plans well laid. There was a lumberman's hut a day's walk from the camp; he must make that by night. There would be a rough bed and chopped wood; he could sleep and rest and then, if all went well, he ought to make St. Ange by the end of the following day, particularly if he got a "lift," which was not impossible.

Just then, for the morning was beginning to show through the gaunt trees, a bird-note sounded. Billy rose quickly—there was no time to waste. Sometimes a bird sounded that warning when a storm was near. It would never do for him to face a storm so far from shelter.

All that day Billy trudged on. Fortunately it was a constant, though gradual, decline and the journey was made easier. He ate occasionally, and gained courage and strength, but it was nearly nine o'clock—though Billy was not aware of it—before the landmarks proved his hope true—the woodman's hut was near at hand.

The boy had all the keenness of his age and environment. He knew that others besides himself might avail themselves of the shelter, and he had reason for choosing his company; so, before he reached the house, he took to tip-toeing, and keeping clear of the underbrush.

The hut had one small window, before which hung a dilapidated shutter by a rusty hinge. The door opened, Billy knew, into a little passage from which the room door opened, and from which a rickety ladder led up to a loft, unused and apparently useless.

As the boy neared the house his trained senses detected the smell of fire and the sound of muffled voices. He crept to the window, and through the broken shutter saw two figures crouching by the blazing logs, but the faces were turned away, and the gloom of the room made it impossible for Billy to decide whether the men were familiars or strangers.

Meanwhile the wind was rising with a storm in its keeping; there was nothing to do but seek refuge, for, until he could determine his further course, Billy decided to take to the loft in order to reconnoitre.

Cautiously he made his way to the door, lifted the latch and gained the entry. There he paused, for the voices had ceased speaking and the boy feared that he had been heard. After a moment he concluded it was safer to be in the loft in case the men were suspicious, so he hurriedly mounted the ladder and crawled along the dusty floor of the space overhead.

Gratefully, to his half-frozen form, the heat from below rose, and with it came the odour of frying bacon, and the sound of sizzling fat.

Fortune was still further with Billy. There was a pile of discarded bedding and clothing on the floor. If worst came he could stay where he was and be partially comfortable.

As he reached this conclusion a voice from below caused his heart to stand still.

"I thought I'd seen the last of yer. You got all I had—what more do you want with me?"

It was Jude Lauzoon who spoke.

"See here, son"; and the smooth tones filled Billy with an old fear; "that was all a big mistake. My hand was out of the game. St. Ange had taken the nerve out of me. I've got my steam up now." It was Jared Birkdale! and Billy had hoped he was never to see the man again. From his babyhood up, a look from Jared had had power to quell him when a blow from another might fail.

"Well, I ain't got nothing more to give you." Jude sounded sullen and ugly.

Through a crack in the floor Billy could see that it was Jude who was preparing the evening meal, while Jared, as usual, was taking his ease, and discoursing at his leisure.

"You've got more to give than what you know Jude, my boy. What you doing here, anyway?"

"You see what I'm doing. Here, take this hunk of bread, and come nearer so I can flip the bacon on."

The sight and smell made Billy's mouth water, even while something in him foretold danger.

"Now, see here, Jude." Jared spoke through a full mouth. "You and me can't afford to work at cross purposes. Where we failed once, we are going to succeed next time."

"You darsn't show your face down there beyond the woods again, and you know it." Jude spoke doggedly. "They was after us both. Besides I can't stand transplanting. It would be the death of me. It nearly was."

"Don't be white-livered, Jude. You see the laws have changed more than any one could have thought, while I was browsing away in St. Ange. That's where I made my mistake. I ought to have taken time and got the lay of the land 'fore I beckoned to you; but it looked safe enough, and I had to take, or leave the Joint, sudden. How could any man know it was spotted, and so had to be got rid of? It was one on us and no mistake.

"Fill up my cup, Jude, you're a tasty one with cooking."

Jude obeyed and muttered as he did so: "Luck or no luck, I ain't got nothing, nor ever will have again, so that's an end of it."

"Jude, where you going to?"

"Where be you?"

Up aloft Billy waited.

"I'm going to St. Ange." There was defiance in Jude's tone—defiance and a sort of shame; Jude had again lost his grip.

"I've just come from there," said Jared.

And now Billy could see through his peephole that Jude started into life.

"You been there?"

Jared gurgled assent.

"How is—she?"

"That's it, Jude. Now let's get down to business. Having to hide somewhere after that little unpleasantness down State, I ran up to St. Ange. Knowing the way about, it was a better place than some others, and I could keep from sight and find things out. I stopped at Laval's haunted shack." Billy shivered. "I kept clear of my place."

"Guess you wasn't disturbed none at Laval's," sneered Jude and he gave an unpleasant laugh.

"'Twas blasted cold, and I had the devil's time getting enough at night to keep me going by day; but I learned a heap, and I struck your gold mine all right, sonny."

"What you mean? Spit it out."

Billy crouched closer, and his breath came thick and fast.

"He's—left her!"

"Gaston?" An ugly oath escaped Jude.

"Gaston. But not for what you think. Jude, he's after you." Jared paused for effect.

"After me?" The ugliness gave place to a dull fear.

"You, my son. He wants you to free Joyce." Evidently this announcement failed to reach Jude's intelligence.

"Free her? Me? What's got you, old man? Didn't she cut, herself?"

"You don't catch on, Jude. He wants to do the big, white thing by the girl—marry her out of hand clean and particular, and he wants to get your word that you won't make any trouble."

A silence followed this. Jude was struggling to digest it; but the result was simple.

"Well, by thunder! Won't he have to pay high for it?"

There was excitement and feverish energy in Jude's voice now.

"Maybe he'll fling a bone to you—but don't you see, son, you can hold off and make him pay, and pay and pay?

"Now tell me, so true as you live, what was you going down to St. Ange for?"

"I was going down to"—Jude hesitated. "Well, I was tired of being hounded, and having to hide and starve. I was going down to get—what—I could—and no questions asked." A foolish laugh followed. Beside Jared's subtlety, Jude seemed a babbling infant with feeble aims.

Jared was contemptuous.

"Gosh darn it, Jude! It's good I fell across your path again. You might have thrown away the one, great, shining opportunity of your life. Listen to my plans. You better stay where you are, and let me run this here show. I got the tracks all laid out. I'm sort o' inspired where it comes to plotting for them I love. I'm going to write a touching letter to her. It's going to state that Gaston is laid up from an accident in a hut, further up to the north. A lumberman is going to write the letter—catch on? and she's wanted up to Gaston's dying bedside. The lumberman is going to meet her at Laval's. When she's caught safe and sure, Jock Filmer—he's the go-between in all this—will get that information, or the part about her going away, to Gaston; then the game's in our hands. If Gaston means business, he'll pay what we say. If he ain't sharp set as to a big figger, we've got Joyce; and by thunder! who's got a better right? Then we'll make tracks, after the spring freshet, to another place I know of where laws is stationary and folks ain't over keen, and where a handsome woman like Joyce will help. I've got money enough left from the wreck to tide us over, my son—unless Gaston planks down."

All this completed Billy's demoralization. His teeth chattered louder, and for the life of him he could not control an audible sound, half sob, half sigh. But Jude was evidently as much overpowered as Billy, for the boy suddenly heard him emit an oath, and then a volley of questions designed to clear the air after Jared's storm of eloquence.

"She'll come, all right." Jared had his answers ready. "It's an all-fired queer state of things down there to St. Ange. You and me ain't never struck Gaston's kind before. Joyce'll go when he calls, and don't you forget it—all I've got to do is to make the lumberman's letter real convincing.

"Sure! I'm the lumberman, all right. Camp up north? Nothing. I'll land her here where her rightful and loving husband will be waiting for her till further developments. How did I find out the lay of the land? Gosh! that was a tight squeeze. I found out he was over to Hillcrest, Gaston you know; and I run up, after dark to his shack, planning to get a haul from Joyce. I got into the back kitchen while she was outside, and before I could get away—in walks Gaston. What I saw and heard that evening, Jude, ain't necessary here, but it blazed our trail, boy, and I cut later—taking more than I planned for." Birkdale breathed hard. "You leave Gaston to me, curse 'im!

"Make trouble for us? How in thunder is a man to make trouble for a husband who is taking his own wife to his dishonoured bosom? Lord! Jude, you've got about as much backbone as an angle worm.

"What?" Some muttered words followed that Billy could not catch. Then—

"Trust me! Does any one know to this day, you blamed fool, who shot that government detective that was snooping into that clearing you and me made—five years back? Gaston'll pay or you'll take one of them never-failing shots of yours, and——"

It had been a hard day for Billy, and he was only fourteen.

The low, smoke-filled loft seemed to draw close about him, and it smothered the life out of him. He thought he screamed, but instead, an unseen power laid a kindly hand upon his trembling mouth, and a pause came in his troubled life. It was not sleep, nor was it faintness that struck like death the frightened boy—but an oblivion, from which he issued clear-headed and strengthened.

When he again realized his surroundings he was cramped and cold, and hungry as a wolf. From below two deep, unmusical snores rose comfortingly. There was but one thing to do—and Billy must prepare for it.

He ate every crumb of food that remained in his bag; then he rubbed himself until his numbness lessened. At last he was ready to set forth for St. Ange, and, be it forever to his glory, Billy the Redeemed, had only Joyce in mind when his grim little freckled face once more turned toward home!

Christmas, the joys of the bungalow, all, all were forgotten. It was a big and an awful thing he had on hand, but he must carry it out to the end. Floating gossip gained strength in Billy's memory as he trudged through the black morning of that second hard day.

Childhood was not much considered in St. Ange, but childhood protects itself to a certain degree, and Billy had never fully understood what the gossip about Joyce had meant. All at once he seemed to have become a man; and, oh! thank God, a man with a warm heart. A kinship of suffering and hope with Joyce made him wondrous tender. He'd stand by her. They should all see what he could do. And that hated Jared Birkdale should be driven forever from St. Ange.

It was a long, dreary journey which Billy took that day. The plentiful morning meal had beggared the future, but it had given the boy power to start well.

With daylight and home in view, although at a dim distance, Billy felt that he controlled Fate.

It would be some days before Jared could possibly get the letter to Joyce. Long before it came he, Billy, would be on the spot, and nothing could pass unnoticed before his eyes.

At eight o'clock of that second day, the boy, worn to the verge of exhaustion, staggered into his mother's kitchen, and almost frightened Peggy to death by simply announcing:

"I've cut, and I'll be eternally busted if I ever go back, so there! And I'm starved."

With the latter information Peggy could deal; the former was beyond her. She prepared a satisfying repast for her son; noting, as she hovered over him, the change that had come. He was no longer a child, therefore he was to be respected. An awe possessed Peggy. The awe of Man as she had ever known him. Her Billy was a man! Then she noticed how thin he was, and how his mouth drooped, and how black the circles were under his big eyes.

Had they been cruel to him in camp? They could be so cruel; but then, Billy was a favourite.

What had happened?

It was proof of Billy's spiritual and physical change that Peggy did not cuff him and demand an explanation.



CHAPTER XV

Billy ate long and uninterruptedly. Peggy supplied his demands before they were voiced, and Maggie, the small and unimpressed sister, eyed him from across the table with keen, unsympathetic stare. Occasionally she made known her opinions with a calm, sisterly detachment that roused no resentment in the new being who had hurled himself upon them.

"You eat like a real pig," Maggie remarked with a sniff. She was being trained for the bungalow fete, and she had suffered in the process.

Billy eyed her indifferently.

"Push them 'taters nearer," was all he replied.

"Your father'll kill you," Peggy ventured timidly, as she filled Billy's cup for the fourth time with a concoction which passed in St. Ange for coffee, because Leon Tate so declared it.

"No, he won't, neither," Billy said; "nobody ain't ever going to kill me, never!"

He turned a tense, defiant face to his mother, but there was something in his eyes that drew tears to Peggy's. She came behind his chair and, half afraid, let her hand rest upon his thin shoulder.

Wonder of wonders! Billy did not shake off the unfamiliar caress. On the contrary he smiled into the work-worn face above him.

"Ain't Billy terrible speckled when the tan's off?" Maggie broke in, "and his hair's as red as my flannel petticoat."

Peggy cast a threatening glance at her daughter.

"Clear off the table!" she commanded, for Billy was at last finished.

Maggie set about the task with relief. Something was afoot that she could not understand. Maggie was not spiritually constructed, but she was going to be a woman some day!

"Mother!" Generally Billy addressed her as "say!" "Mother, I'm going over to Hillcrest to school. I'm going to work when I can, and—make somewhat of myself."

Maggie dropped a cup, and, because she happened to be near her mother, Peggy relieved her own feelings by boxing the girl's ears. Then she turned again to her man-child and stared stupidly.

Poor downtrodden Peggy! She was at a crisis of motherhood that is common to high and low. Since Mary of Galilee found her son in the Temple questioning Wisdom, and with awe beheld that he was no longer her little child, the paralyzing question, "What have I to do with thee?" has set maternity back upon itself over and over again, in order that the suddenly arrived Man might be upon "his Father's business."

"Going to—make—something of yourself?"

Peggy's trembling hands groped feebly, and then, thank heaven! Billy drew near and glorified this new, but lonely place of his own creation.

"You've done your best, mother; I see it now, but I was—I ain't going to say what I was—but I'm going to be something different; and you're going to help me now, like you always have."

A pain gripped Peggy's throat, and the room whirled about. Then the mist cleared from the dim eyes and Hope lighted them.

"Son," she said solemnly, "I am. I don't quite see how, but the way will be opened. Go in, now, and rest; you look clean done for."

It was humiliating, but Billy had to feel his way to the door of the bedchamber beyond.

Alone with her daughter, Peggy's Vision on the Mount faded.

"Billy's aged terrible," she said to Maggie, who was still sulking because of the boxed ear.

"I know what's the matter with him." Maggie's lynx-eyes glittered. "I found some po'try he writ on the back of the wood-shed door. He thought nobody but him ever went there. It's grand po'try."

Maggie struck an attitude, and drawled:

My heart feels like a chunk of rock When I am far from you, But when you trip acrost my vision My heart melts same as du.

"I learned that in one morning!" Maggie proudly declared. "I don't care if he is my brother, that's grand."

Peggy dropped helplessly in her chair. She had never looked for glory in her modest dream. That Billy should escape the degradation of the Black Cat, and that Maggie might have a lighter cross than her own to carry, had been the most she had plead for when she had had time to pray; and now—why God had crowned her lot by children who were undoubtedly geniuses! Maggie, too, had a circle of light about her head. And it had all dawned upon Peggy in a flash of an eye.

"You ain't sick to your stomach, are you, mother?"

Peggy repudiated this with scorn.

"Maggie," she said softly, "I want that you should write that out real plain for me, in print. I'm going to take it up to the bungalow."

"Billy'll cuss us." Maggie turned coward.

"Oh! I ain't going to let Mr. Drew think Billy done it." Peggy was waxing bold. "I'm going to tell him it was writ by a noted po'try-maker, and I want to find out what his views is as to its fineness."

Maggie looked dubious.

"He might guess," she said.

"How could he?" Peggy raised her face ecstatically. Then Maggie came close to her mother.

"Ma," she whispered, "don't you know why Billy writ that, and why he wants to get learning, and what not?"

"No," gasped Peggy, and she felt that the heavens were about to open.

"He wants to be different so he can spark—her!"

"Spark?" Peggy panted inanely as if the word were of foreign tongue.

"Yep, spark."

"Her?"

"Yep. Her. Miss Drew."

Peggy's jaw dropped.

Since the sudden opening of the door, and Billy's unlooked-for entrance, events had crowded upon Peggy Falstar's horizon.

Her children had been translated. She felt desolate and stricken, although her heart glowed with pride as she viewed them from afar. In a last attempt to cling to her familiar attitude toward Maggie at least, Peggy vaguely remarked:

"I wonder if your being a girl makes you such a plain fool?"

"I 'spose it might," Maggie returned indifferently.

"Well," her mother continued, "don't you go upsetting Billy with any of your fool ideas."

"I ain't going to hurt 'im." Maggie tossed her head.

"Hurt him!" Peggy sniffed. "You lay this up for future hatching, Maggie Falstar. You, me, nor nobody ain't ever going to hurt him again and know it. What hurts he gets, from now on, he ain't going to howl about."

Just then the supposedly slumbering Billy came out of the inner room. Mother and sister eyed him critically. He was magnificently attired in all the meagre finery he could call into service. What he lacked in attire he made up in the grooming. Billy shone. Billy was plastered. Billy smelled to high heaven of soap and kerosene. But there was that about Billy which checked Maggie's ribald jeers, and the mother's question as to where he was going.

However, Billy was magnanimous in his power. He turned at the outer door and satisfied his mother's curiosity.

"Anything you want sent up to Joyce's?"

"Joyce's?" gasped Maggie. "Joyce's?"

Billy held her with a glance.

"Joyce's," he repeated. Then receiving no reply, he went out into the still, cold night.

Billy felt like a man who held the fortune of many in the hollow of his hand.

Knowing the ways of St. Ange men he felt sure the letter from "the backwoodsman" to Joyce would be several days, or a week, in materializing, perhaps much longer. It was for him to be ready and watchful; but there was no immediate call for action. His sympathies were so largely aroused for Joyce, that he meant to overcome his yearning to be with the object of his passion, and on that first night he intended going to Gaston's shack and setting Joyce right about the future and his own part in the drama.

Billy realized that he must shield himself. Birkdale and Lauzoon must never know of his presence in the hut. Joyce, Billy felt sure, would cooeperate with him. If he and she could find Gaston, all might be safe and well; but while Gaston was absent, danger lurked. However, Joyce must refuse to meet "the backwoodsman"; after that they two, Billy and Joyce, must find a path that connected Gaston with them, and make him secure from the plots of the evil Birkdale and the weak, foolish Jude of the unerring shot.

All this Billy thought upon as he strode forward whistling comfortably, and his chest swelling proudly.

It was one thing to whistle on the highway of St. Ange, and quite another to whistle in the wilds of the North Solitude.

Billy was full of creature comfort, and the scattered lights of the houses gave cheer and a feeling of security to the boy.

The Black Cat's twinkling eyes had no charm for Billy. They were never to have a charm for him; but as he neared the bungalow his whistle grew intermittent and his legs had an inclination in one direction while his heart sternly bade him follow another. Then, without really being aware of his weakness, Billy found himself knocking on the bungalow door, and his heart thumped wildly beneath the old vest of his father's which he wore closely buttoned under the coat he had painfully outgrown.

In response to his knock, the wide, hospitable door was flung open, and Billy faced a stranger who quite unnerved him, by the direct and pointed question:

"Why, good evening, little boy; what do you want?"

The glow from within set Billy's senses in a mad whirl, but the "little boy" was like a dash of cold water to his pride and egotism.

"I—I—want—her!" Poor Billy was in a lost state.

"It is—I do believe it is my delectable Billy."

It was her voice, and it floated down to the boy at the gate of Paradise, from the top of a step-ladder. Halfway up the ladder Jock Filmer stood with his hands full of greens and his eyes full of laughter.

"Billy, come up and be welcomed. Get down Jock, you've had your turn."

His turn! A fierce hate rose in Billy's heart; but the stranger closed the door behind him; Aunt Sally and the minister were saying kind things to him, and informing him that the angel who had admitted him was Mrs. Dale, the Fairy of Christmas, and a great admirer of little boys.

Little boys! Were they bent on insulting him?

Jock descended with that laugh of his that always disturbed Billy's preconceived ideas. Then Billy was facing Her as she bent to meet him halfway.

The glad smile passed slowly from Constance Drew's face. The others, below, were talking and forgetting the two upon the ladder.

"Why—Billy—have you—been sick?"

"No, ma'am."

"Did they let you come home for Christmas?"

"No, ma'am. I jest cum."

Constance looked long at him, and at last the laugh was gone even from her dear eyes.

"Billy," she said softly, laying her hands on his shoulders, "you've been keeping your word to me, about swearing, and—and all the rest?"

"Yes'm."

"It's been hard, too, dear, I know; but it has made you into something—better." And then with a shining look on her face she bent and kissed him.

The heat rushed all over Billy's body, following a cold perspiration. His mouth twitched, and a maddening feeling of tears rose to his smarting eyes.

"I'm—going—over—to—Hillcrest school!" He whispered feebly, "I'm going—to get—learnin', an' things."

"Oh! Billy!"

"Yes'm."

"Oh! my dear Billy."

But such moments in life are brief. They are only permitted as propellers for all the other plain moments which are the common lot. Billy and Constance came down from the heights morally, spiritually and physically and joined the commonplace things below.