Joyce of the North Woods | Page 2

in its turning dropped the Golden Bead of Love into St. Ang��! Down deep it sank to the bottom of the crucible. Jude Lauzoon was blinded by it and stung to life; Joyce Birkdale through its power came into the heritage of her soul. Jock Filmer by its magic force was shorn of his poor shield and left naked and unprotected for Fate's crudest darts. John Gaston, working out his salvation in his shack hidden among the pines, was burnt by the divining rays that penetrated to his secret place and spared him not. And then, when things were at their tensest, Ralph Drew came and tuned the discordant notes into sweet harmony. St. Ang�� became in time a home for many whom despair had marked for its own; a Sanctuary for devoted service.
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ILLUSTRATIONS
"You've got the winning cards, my girl ... It's all in the playing now" Frontispiece
FACING PAGE
"Once I went so far as to go up there with my gun" 76
That pictured Mother and Child were moulding Joyce's character 114
Presently he opened his eyes ... and there sat the girl of his dreams near him 188
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JOYCE OF THE NORTH WOODS
CHAPTER I
The man lying flat on the rock which crusted Beacon Hill raised his head with a snake-like motion, and then let it fall back again upon his folded arms. His body had not moved; it seemed part of the stone and moss.
The midsummer afternoon was sunny and hot, and the fussy little river rambling through the Long Meadow was talking in its sleep.
Lazily it wound around young maples, and ferny groups--it would crush them by and by, poor trusting things--then it would stumble against a rock or pile of loose stones, wake up and repeat the strain it had learned at its mother's breast, far up in the North Woods.
"I'm here! here! here! I'll be ready by and by, by, by, by." Then on again, a little faster perhaps, but still dreamily. Children's laughter sounded far below; a slouching man or woman making for the Black Cat bent on business or pleasure, passed now and then; all else was still and seemingly asleep.
Again Jude raised his head and gave that quick glance around.
Jude was awake at last. Little Billy Falstar had roused him two days before and set the world in a jangle. The child's impish words had struck the scales from Jude's eyes, and the blinding light made him shrink and suffer.
"Him and her," the boy had whispered, hugging his bruised and dirty knees as he squatted by Jude's door; "him and her is sparking some." Then he laughed the freakish laugh of mischief.
Jude was polishing the gun which John Gaston had given him a year before, and had trained him to use until he was second only to Gaston himself for marksmanship. "Him and her--who?" he asked, raising his dull eyes to Billy's tormenting face.
"Joyce and Mr. Gaston. Him and her is beaux, I reckon. She goes to his shack; I listened outside the winder once--he reads to her and tells her things. They walks in the Long Medder, too, and once I saw him kiss her."
Again the teasing laugh that set every nerve tingling.
Then it was that Jude awoke, and his hot French blood, mingled with his canny Scotch inheritance, rose in his veins and struck madly against brain and heart.
He stared at Billy as if the boy had given him a physical blow--then he looked beyond him at the woods, the sky, the highway and the dejected houses--nothing was familiar! They all seemed alive and alert. Unseen happenings were going on--he must understand.
"You saw--him--kiss--her?" The gun fell limply across the man's knees.
"Yep," Billy whipped his dramatic sense into action. He arose and strode before Jude with Gaston's own manner. "This way. His arms out, and him a-laughing like, and Joyce she kinder run inter his arms and he held her, like this--." The close embrace of the childish gesture seemed to strangle Jude, and he gave a muffled cry. This acted like a round of applause upon Billy.
"Yep, and he kept on hugging and kissing her like this--" Billy went into an ecstasy of portrayal. Suddenly, however, he reeled into sanity, for Jude had struck him across the cheek with the back of a hand trembling with new-born emotion.
"Take that, you impish brat," he had said, "and more like it if you stand there another minute with your lying capers."
"They ain't lies," wailed Billy, edging away and nursing his smarting face; "he did! he did! It was in his shack--I saw 'em!"
"Get out," yelled Jude, glowering darkly; "and you tell that to any one else and," he came nearer to the shrinking child, "I swear I'll choke yer till yer can't speak." So changed was Jude that Billy trembled before him.
"I won't," he whispered, "I