ntering the pine thicket
through which his private path ran. He must have walked slowly--or had
all this new knowledge come so rapidly?

Gaston stood still at the entrance to the woods. Was he looking back?

Then something occurred. Once or twice before Joyce had been conscious
of this. Something seemed to go out from her and follow Gaston. She, or
that strange something, escaped the fear and smothering closeness of the
little house. It was free and happy out there with Gaston in the night.
He was strong--stronger than anybody in St. Ange. Nothing could really
happen while _he_ was near. She saw his smile; felt his compelling
touch--no, not even Jude would dare hurt her, or go too far.

Gaston passed into the dim thicket. Joyce, too seemed to be going on
quite happily and lightly, when----

"I say, Joyce, shut that winder, can't you?"

A silence. As Joyce had followed a certain call the night she had
promised to marry Jude, and had gone to Gaston's house, so now she was
going on--and on--and----

"Joyce!" At last the real clutched the unreal. The girl, for the first
time, was conscious of the biting cold. She shivered and seemed to
travel back to that rough call over frozen distances. With stiff fingers
she drew the heavy wooden shutters together and lowered the sash. Then
feeling her way with outstretched hands, like a bewildered child, she
made her way to the inner chamber and Jude.

CHAPTER VIII

The following June Joyce's little boy was born. It was a most
inconvenient time for him to make his appearance.

The late spring had delayed the logging season. The winter had been a
long-continued, cold one; the men at the different camps had fretted
under the postponed ending of their jobs, and severe discipline had been
necessary in more than one camp. Hillcrest's ideas of decency had been
deeply outraged; its courts of justice had been kept busy by men, who,
unable to resist temptation after restraint had at last been removed,
carried lawlessness to an unprecedented excess.

The river, too, with the depravity of inanimate things, had taken that
occasion to leap all bounds and run wild where never before it had
ventured. Not being content in carrying its legitimate burden of logs to
the lower towns, it bore away, one black night, more than half of the
lumber that Jude had piled near the clearing for Ralph Drew's new house.

This occurrence sent Jude into one of the fits of sullen frenzy which
were bec