Joyce of the North Woods | Page 8

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
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