plative eye, looked at his daughter through
the haze of his tobacco smoke as if seeing her for the first time. In a
way this was so. He was not one to take heed of time or happenings. When
he was not obliged to work, he was enjoying himself in his own way, and
so long as nothing jarred him, life slipped by comfortably enough.

When he worked he was away, as all St. Ange men were, in the camps.
Occupation, outside of Leon Tate's profession, was the same for all the
men after first boyhood was past. When the logging season was over
Jared, more temperate, perhaps more cruel for that reason, settled down.
When he was not occupying the chair of honour at the Black Cat--given
him by common consent because of his superior mental endowments--he was
lounging at home and idly appreciating the plain comfort for which Joyce
was responsible; a comfort Jared neither understood nor questioned.

But little Billy Falstar, the day before, with the fiendish depravity of
a mischief-making child, had set the match to a fuse of gunpowder all
ready for it down at the Black Cat.

Resenting the treatment Jude had given him when he had voiced his
observations about Gaston and Joyce, he had gone to the tavern to nurse
his wounded feelings where company and safety abounded. His fear of Jude
had departed.

Several men, Birkdale among them, were sitting about when Billy,
sniffing and rubbing his knuckles in his eyes to such an extent that of
necessity notice must be taken, drew their attention.

"What's up, Billy?" asked Jock Filmer good-naturedly; "shingle struck a
thin place in your breeches? Go around and buy a peppermint stick.
Here's a cent. Peppermint ought to be as good for a pain in your
hindquarters as it is for one in your first cabin. Let up, kid, and get
cheerful!"

Billy accepted the coin, but turned a calculating eye on the others. If
his news had had power to rouse Jude, how would it act now? Billy,
freckled and sharp-eyed, was a born tragedian.

"'Tain't Ma," he said. "No more was it Pa; it was that Jude what beat me
most to a jelly."

This was startling enough to awaken a new interest. Jude was too lazy on
general principles to reduce any one to jelly unless the provocation had
been great.

"What divilment was you up to?" Filmer asked with a leer.

"I didn't do nothing! 'Pon my soul, I didn't. I swear!"

This Billy did, fervently and fluently. The children of St. Ange swore
with a guileless eloquence quite outside the s