Joyce of the North Woods. Harriet T. Comstock

again. This time he walked steadily, and he was quite himself. The best self he had ever yet been.

      "I want you Joyce—God knows I do."

      "He said you did."

      "Who?"

      "He—Mr. Gaston."

      "He—said that? Then why in thunder did—he kiss you?"

      That rock Jude dashed against at every turn.

      "He didn't until—until I told him—I liked you."

      Poor Joyce! She was never to tell any one that that admission had been wrung from her in order to make Gaston think he himself had not been deeply in her thoughts. It had been a difficult fencing match that afternoon.

      "You told him that?" A light came into Jude's handsome, heavy face, which quickly vanished as the torturing jealousy, feeding upon a new hope, rose, defiantly. "You told him you cared—and then he kissed you, damn him! Maybe he thinks he'll get you to take me, and then he'll go on with hand-holding and kissing all the safer."

      "Take that back," cried Joyce harshly. "Take that back, Jude Lauzoon." Yet as she resented the implied insult, the primitive woman in her admired Jude as it had never admired him before.

      "I didn't mean it against you, Joyce, I swear it. Can't you see how I love yer and I don't want yer hurt? No one ain't going to hurt yer!" He had clutched her to him roughly but tenderly. "Maybe he wouldn't want ter, maybe I don't understand—but he can't, anyway!"

      She was sobbing hysterically against his breast.

      "You're mine, lass; you're just a little one; you don't know things. You're no older than you was when you toted over to Hillcrest and—and never felt afraid."

      Jude tried to kiss the tear-stained face, but she pressed it closer against him. He had to be content with the satin softness of her thick hair.

      Suddenly she sprang from him. A sickish odour was filling the room.

      "Everything's burned," she gasped; "everything!" She drew the pot from the stove and ruefully carried it outside. "Nothing left, Jude;" she laughed nervously. "Nothing but crusts and leavings."

      "You go to bed," commanded Jude authoritatively; "that's what you need more than anything!"

      "Yes, yes, that's what I need—sleep. I'm almost dead, I'm so tired."

      Jude looked at her hungrily. The sudden happy ending of his torture gave him an unreal, unsafe feeling.

      He wanted to touch her again in the new, thrilling way, but she was forbidding even in her sweet yielding.

      "You go to bed," he said vaguely; "I'll go down to the Black Cat, and see that your father gets home all right."

      Joyce stepped backward to the chamber door beyond.

      "Thank you," she murmured; "I certainly am dead tired."

CHAPTER II

       Table of Contents

      There was only a path leading from the highway to John Gaston's shack. A path wide enough for a single traveller, and the dark pointed pines guarded it on either side until within ten feet of the house. The house itself sat cosily in the clearing. It was a log house built by amateur hands, but roughly artistic without, and mannishly comfortable within.

      The broad door opened into the long living room, where a deep fireplace (happily the chimney had drawn well from the first, or the builder would have been sore perplexed) gave a look of hospitality to the otherwise severe furnishings. The fireplace and mantel-shelf were Gaston's pride and delight. Upon them he had worked his fanciful designs, and the result was most satisfactory. There was a low, broad couch near the hearth piled with pine cushions covered with odds and ends of material that had come into a man's possession from limited sources. A table, home-made, and some Hillcrest chairs completed the furnishings, except for the china and cooking utensils that ornamented shelves and hooks around the room.

      An inner door opened into Gaston's bedchamber and sanctum. No one but himself ever entered there.

      There was a broad desk below the one wide window of that room and a revolving chair before it. A boxed-in affair, filled with fragrant pine boughs, answered for a bed. This was covered with white sheets and a pair of fine, handsome, red blankets. An iron-bound chest stood by the bed with a padlock strong enough to guard a king's treasure, and around the walls of the room there were rows of books, interrupted here and there to admit a picture of value and beauty out of all proportion to the other possessions.

      Over the window hung a large-faced clock that kept faultless time, and announced the fact hourly in a mellow, but convincing, voice. Just below the window and over the desk, was a pipe-rack with pipes to fit every mood and fancy of a lonely man. There were the short stumpy ones, with the small bowls for the brief whiff when one did not choose to keep company with himself for long, but was willing to be sociable for a moment. There were the comfortable, self-caring pipes that obligingly kept lighted between long puffs while the master was looking over old papers, or considering future plans. Then there were the long-stemmed, deep-bellied friends for hours when Memory would have her way and wanted the misty, fragrant setting for her pictures that so comforted or tormented the man who wooed them.

      By the rude desk Gaston was sitting on the evening that Jude and Joyce were clinging to each other in the house under the maples. His hands were plunged deep in the pockets of his corduroy trousers, his long legs extended, and his head thrown back; he was smoking one of his memory-filled pipes, and his eyes were fixed upon the rafters of the room.

      He was a good-looking fellow in the neighbourhood of thirty-five; browned by an out-of-door life, but marked by a delicacy of feature and expression.

      The strength that was in Gaston's face might puzzle a keen reader of character as to whether it were native, or the result of years of well-fought battles. Once the will was off guard, a certain softness of the eyes, and a twitching of the mouth muscles came into play; but the will was rarely off guard during Gaston's waking hours.

      An open book lay upon the desk, and the student lamp cast a full light upon the words that had caught the reader's thoughts after the events of the day and their outcome.

      "In the life of every man there occurs at least one epoch when the spirit seems to abandon the body, and elevating itself above mortal affairs just so far as to get a comprehensive and general view, makes this an estimate of its humanity, as accurate as it is possible, under the circumstances, to that particular spirit. The soul here separates itself from its own idiosyncrasy, or individuality, and considers its own being, not as appertaining solely to itself, but as a portion of the universal Ego. All important good resolutions of character are brought about at these crises of life; and thus it is our sense of self which debases and keeps us debased."

      Poe and Gaston were great friends. The living man knew that had he known Poe in the body he would have feared and detested him, but there was no doubt he had left trails of glory in his wake, for the comfort of struggling humanity, if only one could lose sight of the man, in the spiritual effulgence of his genius.

      Gaston, in his detached life, practised many arts upon his individuality and character. He had time and to spare to "abandon the body," and he was growing more and more confident, that in these self-imposed crises he was gaining not only strength, but a keen and absorbing interest in others. If the sense of self debased, then this detachment was his great salvation.

      The rings of smoke curled upward, lost shape and formed a haze of blueness. The heat became intense, and the noises of the summer night magnified. The windows and doors were set wide, Gaston's wood-trained senses were alert even in this abstraction.

      "What next?" That was the question. He had just come through a conflict with flying colours. He was flushed with victory, but the after details annoyed him. With the waning enthusiasm of achievement, from his point of vantage