to catch on to some kind of doings. Your old man, Joyce, ain't half
the fool you'd like him to be. I wasn't napping when Billy Falster
blabbed his warning. I wasn't napping when I saw that hand-holding and
kissing from the top of Beacon Hill. I wasn't snoozing that night when
you went crawling to Gaston's shack just after you'd given your word to
me, and"--Jude had worked himself into a quivering rage--"I wasn't
sleeping when you and him sat _there_ to-night, blast ye!"

The convincing knowledge broke upon Joyce with full force. She would
never be able to ignore the fact again. Try as she might, dream as she
could, she was but a St. Ange woman, and he a St. Ange man.

There was only one way. She must deal with the rudest of materials.

"Jude," she said slowly, "you pay Mr. Gaston back all that you owe
him--I'll stint here in the house--and I'll promise never to speak to
him again. Could anything be fairer than that?"

She was in deadly earnest; but Jude laughed in her face.

A fear grew in the girl's heart at the sound. Not even an appeal to his
selfishness could move him. She had lost the poor little power she once
possessed. He did not care! And when that happened with a man like
Jude--well, there was reason for fear.

"I'm the boss, girl, and you better hold to that knowledge. Keep your
books, your pictures and what not as long as I say you can, and let that
do you for what _I_ am getting out of it. See?"

"Yes--I see!" And so she did, poor girl; and it was a long barren
stretch on ahead that she saw. A stretch with hideous possibilities,
unless luck were with her.

"Don't you let on." Jude was striding toward the bedchamber beyond. "I
guess you're smart enough to hold your tongue, though. Pile on a log or
two, before you turn in; and you better draw the shutters to the north
window--it's getting splitting cold."

Joyce turned to obey the commands. Not slavishly; after all it was but
part of her woman-task. Jude feeling it necessary to tell her was the
lash. It was cruelly superfluous--that was all.

She laid two heavy logs on the red embers, and stooped to brush the
ashes from the hearth. Then she went to the north window and raised the
sash. Before she drew the shutters she stood and looked out into the
brilliant night.

Black and white. Sharp, clean and magically glittering it all looked;
and the keen cold cleared the fear and fever from her head and heart.

Yes, off there in the distance Gaston was e