It was Billy Falstar who broke upon Joyce's solitude after Ruth Dale had left her.

Worn beyond the point where conscious suffering held strong part, Joyce was completing her final arrangements mechanically and laboriously when Billy presented himself.

"Say, Joyce," the boy faltered, standing in the doorway and kicking his heels together, "I'm blamed sorry I done that sneak job."

"It doesn't matter much, Billy. But now that you are here, will you help me pack food and things? I'm going—away."

Then Billy recalled the letter, and fear rose sharply to the fore.

"You ain't going to go—no such thing!" he cried, coming in and slamming the door behind him. "That's a—that's a fake letter."

"Yes, I know. It doesn't make any difference. But tell me, Billy, is it father or Jude down at the Laval place?"

Billy was stricken with surprise.

"How d' yer know?" he gasped.

"Oh! it was all so foolish!" she answered smiling feebly. "If he—if Mr. Gaston had sent it, don't you see that there would have been no need of this mystery? But is it Jude or father, Billy?"

"It's old Birkdale," Billy burst out, and then between fear and relief he related what had happened in the hut in the woods.

"Then it's a longer way I must go." Joyce sighed wearily. "Do you think I could get there—walking, Billy?"

The boy eyed her as if she had gone crazy.

"'Course not. But what you want to go for, anyway?"

Joyce came close to him. He seemed the only human thing left for her to cling to, the only one to call upon in her sore need.

"Billy, I'm going to Jude because—he's mine, and I belong to him—and it never pays in this world to take what doesn't belong to you."

"But—Gaston—you belong to him—and I want—you—to have him!" Billy felt a mad inclination to cry, but struggled against it.

"No, I never belonged to him, Billy. Believe that all your life—it will make a better man of you. He was heavenly good to me because he was sorry for me—and wanted to see me happy. But happiness doesn't come—that way. Sometimes it seems as if it did—sometimes it seems as if God meant it so—perhaps He did—but the people out—in the world—the people that should have known how—the people who had time and money and learning, they've muddled things so—that we can't even see what God meant for right or wrong.

"Why, Billy, they punish the wrong people, and then when they find out—they do not know the way to set it straight; but it doesn't matter, Billy, we have to go on, on, on, the best we can!"

Joyce put her arms around the boy, and bent her head on his thin, shaking shoulder.

She no longer wore the yellow gown. She was plain, commonplace Joyce, familiar to Billy's unregenerated youth.

But Billy did not fail her. Awkwardly, but with wonderful understanding, he put his arms around her, and whispered:

"I just wisht, Joyce, I was God for a minute—and it would all be right or I'd be——"

"Billy!"

"I'd be gol-swizzled," Billy tamely ended.

He could not master details. He only knew something had happened. Joyce was going to leave Gaston and go to Jude, and he, Billy, must make the way easy, and stand by her as a gentleman should. He patted her arm reassuringly as he thought it out.

"It's 'most night," he said; "I'll hitch up old Tate's mare to the sled. He won't know! It's going to be a big night down to the Black Cat. I'll drive you over to Jude—and wait for yer, if yer say so. If yer don't, then I'll cut back—and I don't care after that."

"Billy!"

"When will you be ready?"

Joyce glanced at the clock.

"It's after six now. I'll be ready when you get back, Billy!"

A moment later Billy had set forth in the black coldness.

It was eight o'clock that evening when the revellers at the Black Cat heard a crunching of the snow as a sled rapidly passed the tavern.

Leon Tate was mixing drinks, with a practised and obliging hand, when the unaccustomed sound struck his ear; he paused, but when the unappreciative driver passed, he lost interest.

"Thought some one was coming?" Tom Smith suggested.

"No; going," Murphy, the engineer, slowly answered.

"Where to, do you suppose?" asked Smith. Any new topic of conversation early in the evening was welcome.

"Like as not," Tate came forward with his brew, "like as not it's them folks up to the bungerler. I heard Mr. Drew had a cutter an' horse over from Hillcrest; and going out nights skylarking seems part of his religion."

"Religion!" sniffed Smith; "they're a rum lot, all right!"

"I wish they was!" Tate put in gloomily, but grinned as the others laughed.

"It's a durned shame to take an animile out nights for fun," Murphy interrupted; "I'd hate to run even the injine 'less 'twas important. Gosh! Tate, you must have let your hand slip when you mixed this."

"Christmas comes but once a year." Tate beamed radiantly. It was good to see that his Black Cat still had charms to compete successfully with the bungalow.

"That piece up to the minister's," Smith glowed inwardly and outwardly, "is the nervy one, all right," he remarked.

"Which one?" asked Tate; "the fixture or the transient?"

"The steady. I was setting here musing late this afternoon, when in she come over there," Tom indicated the woman's side of the screen; "and first thing I knowed if she wasn't standing on a cracker-box on her side, and a-looking over the screen."

"Well, I'll be—" Tate stood straighter.

"'Smith,' says the young woman, 'what does Mr. Tate have screens for?' Then, with her blamed, sassy little nose all crinkled up; 'my! how it does smell. I should think if Mr. Tate had anything, he'd have an air-tight and smell-proof partition.'"

A roar greeted this.

"Like as not." Tate was crimson, "the sentiments you're rehashing ain't got constitootion enough, Smith, to stand much more airing. Something's got to be done in this here place to set matters on a proper footing. You let a woman come nosing around where she don't belong, specially one with a loose-jointed tongue, and there's hell to pay. Our women is getting heady. You men will learn too late, maybe, that you'd better put the screw on while there's something to hold to."

"It's sapping the juice, some." Murphy was beginning to relax. "But, Lord! have you seen the duds for the kids, and the costumes for the women? Mis' Falster had me in to show off hers. Every woman's to have a new frock for the jamboree Christmas night; not to mention the trappings for the kids. The old lady up to the bungerler give 'em."

Tate scowled.

Just then the door opened and Jock Filmer entered. He looked spent and haggard; and his handsome, careless face did not wear its usual happy smile.

"Hello!" he said, slamming the door after him, and walking up to the stove. "I thought I saw your Brown Betty kiting over toward the north, Tate. I was afraid something had happened."

"No; Brown Betty's safe in the barn." Tate's gloom passed as he greeted Jock. "The Reverend's got a new horse. What'll you have, Filmer?"

"Plain soda," Jock replied and walked up to the bar.

Tate almost reeled under the blow.

"Plain—thunder!" he gasped, thinking Jock was joking. But Filmer fixed him with a mirthless stare.

"Plain soda, and no monkeying with it."

The air became electrical.

"Been away?" Murphy tried to break the spell.

"Over to Hillcrest—on business." Jock was gulping down the soda. His throat was dry and burning; and the unaccustomed beverage went against all his desire. "I'm off—to-morrow—for a spell. Won't you join me in a drink, boys?"

The invitation was accepted with alacrity, and Smith asked cordially:

"Where are you bound to, Filmer?"

"Got a job?" Tate gave each man his choice of drinks and looked dubiously at the treater.

"What'll you have now, Filmer?" he asked, "maybe plain water?"

Jock's eyes grew glassy.

"No," he muttered; "make it another soda, Tate. Yes; I've got a job. Such a thundering big one that it's going to take about all the nerve I've got lying around loose."

"Bossing—maybe?" Tate cast a keen glance upon Filmer. Jock returned the look. The gleam had departed from his eyes—he was Tate's master now.

"That's about the size of it," he answered. "Bossing, and it's going to be a go, or you'll never see me again. Here's to you!"

Something of the old dash returned as Jock held his soda aloft.

"Anything happened up to Camp 7?" Tate was uneasy.

"Lord! It's further back than 7." Filmer set his glass down. "It's a new cut—started late, but it's worth trying. So long!"

The others stared after him.

When the door had closed upon the tall, swinging figure, the company turned upon themselves.

"Things are going to—" Tate did not designate the locality. After all, it was needless for him to go into particulars.

An hour later Jock, sitting in his own shack before the warm fire, eyed with satisfaction the preparations for his journey. They consisted of certain comforts in the way of sleeping-bag, provisions, gun and a bag of necessary clothing; and a general mass of dÉbris, in the form of smashed bottles and jugs. A vile smell of liquor filled the room, and there were little streams of fluid running down any available slope leading away from the rubbish. Jock, sitting before the fire, his long legs stretched out and his hands clasped behind his head, eyed these rivulets in a dazed, helpless way, while the foul odour made him half mad with longing. His face was terrible to see, and his form was rigid.

A knock on the outer door made no impression upon him, but a second, louder, more insistent one brought a, "Why in thunder don't you come in, and stop your infernal racket?" from his overwrought nerves.

Drew entered. His fur coat had snow flakes on it. A coming storm had sent its messengers.

For a moment Filmer looked at his visitor with unseeing eyes, then his consciousness travelled back from its far place, and a soft welcome spread over the drawn face. So glad was he to see Drew that he forgot to be patronizing. He was weakly overjoyed.

Drew, with a keen, comprehensive glance, took in the scene and something of what it meant. He smiled kindly, and pulled a chair up before the hearth.

"Been away Filmer, or going?" he asked as he sat down and flung off his coat and fur hat.

"Both," Filmer returned, and although his voice was hard and strained, Drew detected a welcome to him in the tone.

"I wanted you up at the bungalow," he said quietly; "the girls cannot get along without you. It's Christmas Eve," he added quietly, "to-morrow's the big day, you know."

"I shan't be here." The words came harshly. "See here, Drew," Jock flung himself about and leaned toward his guest, his long, thin hands clasped closely and outstretched. "I wanted you to-night more than any one, but God, could know. I couldn't come to you—but you've come to me at the right moment."

"I'm glad of that, Filmer."

"I'm not much of a hand for holding back what I want to give out," Jock rushed on, "and I ain't much of an orator. What I'm going to tell you, Drew, has been corked up for over ten years—it's ripe for opening—will you share it?"

"Can you ask that, Filmer?" The two men looked steadily at each other.

"Did you ever hear of Jasper Filmer on the Pacific Coast?" Jock asked suddenly.

"Yes; he died a week ago. The papers were full of it. We noticed the name—" Drew bent forward—"and wondered."

"I'm his son. There ain't much to tell. It's a common enough yarn. The world's full of the like. It's only when you tackle the separate ones that they seem to differ. The old man—made himself. That kind is either hard as nails or soft as mush. My governor had the iron in his. He banked everything on—me—and I wasn't up to the expectation. I was made out of the odds and ends that were left out of his constitution—and we didn't get on. My mother—" Jock pulled himself together; "she was the sort those self-made men generally hanker after, all lady, and pretty and dainty. You know the kind?"

Drew nodded. His face was ashen.

"I wish you could have seen her, Drew, I've seen a good many, but none, no, not one, who ever came up to her for softness, and fetching ways. Lord! how I loved her. The old man might have known that if I could have gone straight I'd have done it for—mother. She never lost faith in me. Every time I went wrong—she just stopped singing for a time." Filmer gulped. "Then when I pulled myself together, after a while she'd begin again, singing as she went about, and smiling and laughing a laugh that keeps ringing, even now.

"At last the governor got tired of the lapses. I don't blame him; just remember that. He thought if I went off and nibbled—what is it—husks? that I'd come around. He didn't understand that it was the motive power that was lacking in me.

"Good God, Drew! I've been hungry and cold and homesick until I've thought death was the next step; but I couldn't stick to anything long enough to make good. Such men as my father never know what hell-suffering men like me go through—before they fall, and fall, and fall!

"I wrote—lies, home. I wanted to keep mother singing and laughing. I was always doing fine, you know. Coming home in a year or so. I was in Chicago, then New York; but I was getting lower all the time. I put up in those haunted houses—the lodging dives, but I kept those letters going to her, always cheerful.

"Then I made another struggle. I cut for the woods. I got to Hillcrest—when word came—that she had—died!" A dumb suffering stopped the words. Drew laid his hot hand over Filmer's, which were clenched, until the finger-tips were white.

"It was the hope—of making myself fit to go home and hear her sing and laugh that had brought me to Hillcrest. Well, I wrote the old man—that I was going further north. You see, he blamed me. Said the longing for me, the disappointment and the rest, had weakened her heart. I couldn't bear the thought of ever going back—then; so I tramped over the hill and—St. AngÉ adopted me. It's been a tame plot since then, but it's never been as bad as it was before. I dropped into their speech and ways, and things sank to a dead level. I got word from Hillcrest the other day." Filmer looked blankly into the red embers. "The governor has left—it all to me with this saving clause: if I have any honour I am not to take the money until I can use it as my parents would desire. You see, the old man had what I never suspected—a soft place in his heart for me, and a glimmer of hope. It might not have made any difference—but I wish to God I had known it before."

Drew could not stand the misery of the convulsed face. He turned his eyes away.

"Drew!" Filmer had risen suddenly and now confronted his companion with deep, flashing eyes. "Drew, I'm not going to take the fortune unless—I'm fit to handle it. I've been a tramp long enough to know that I can keep on being a tramp, but I'm going to make one more almighty try before I succumb. I may be all wrong, but lately I've thought the—the motive power has—come to me." A strange, uplifting dignity seemed to fall upon Filmer. Drew tried to speak; to say the right thing, but he merely smiled feebly and rose unsteadily to his feet.

"I wouldn't blame you if you—cut me after this, Drew, but it's got to be said. It's—your—sister."

"My—sister? Connie?" Drew was never so surprised and astounded in his life before.

"Connie?" he gasped again. "Connie?"

"If—if—I was what I might be? If I come into my own, Drew, do you think she—could care—for me?"

"How under heaven can I tell?" Drew said slowly; "she has never—how could she? shown—" he paused.

"How indeed, could she?" Filmer laughed a hard, bitter laugh.

"It would be a poor sort of reformation, Jock—" Drew was getting command of himself—"if it were only to get—her! You've got to get yourself, old man, before you'd dare ask any woman to care for you. I often think the best of us ask a good deal—on trust; but at least a man must know himself before he has a right to expect even—faith."

"Oh! I've worked all that out, Drew, I've been to Hillcrest to talk the beginnings over with a little lawyer fellow who's had my confidence all along. I'm going back where I fell, Drew, in the start. I'm going back there where the loss of her—the mother's laugh and song—will grip the hardest and where the antidote will be the easiest to get. I'm going to take only enough of the governor's money to keep me out of the filth of the gutter until I can climb on to the curb or—go to the sewer, see? But always there is going to be your sister above me. Just remember that—and if you can help her to think of me, once in—a while—"

"Filmer, until you climb up, you must not ask me to hold even one thought of my sister's for you; except—" and here Drew looked frankly in the anxious face—"except as the good fellow of—our Solitude."

"Thank you! That's all I meant. And if I pull up—and stay up—she, not I, will know how to use the money. She's got the heart that can reach down to the suffering, and hold little dying kids on her breast. If I go under, Drew, the money is going to her—anyway."

"Filmer!"

"That's all right, Drew. I know what I'm about. She'll brighten up all the dark places—and remember me in that way if in no other."

Long the two men looked at each other; then Drew extended his hand. Jock took it in a firm grip.

"Good night, Filmer, and God be with you!"

"I'm ready to start, I'll tramp back with you as far as the bungalow."

Jock dashed the crumbling, glowing logs with his foot, and left the fire dying, but safe. Then, gathering his travelling things together, he went out with Drew, closing the door behind him.

It was a snowy night now, white and dry. In silence the two trudged on to the bungalow, then Drew said, "and you won't come in, Filmer, just for a word?"

"Thanks; no."

"Where are you going now?"

"To Hillcrest. I start from there to-morrow morning, after another talk with the little fellow I mentioned. I'm going to keep to the woods for a few days—they always brace me—then I'm going to make a break—for the coast."

"You'll—write—to—me—Jock?"

For a moment Filmer hesitated; then he said eagerly:

"Yes; as long as I'm fighting, I'll keep in touch. If I get down—you'll know by my—not writing. And Drew, I want to tell you something. That religion of yours is all right. It was the first kind that ever got into my system and—stayed there. It's got iron, red-hot iron in it, but it's got a homelike kind of friendliness about it that gives you heart to hope in this life, and let the next life take care of itself."

"Thank you, Filmer. That's going to make me—fight."

Another quick, strong handclasp—and then Drew turned toward the glowing windows of his home.

Filmer stood with uncovered head in the driving storm, and looked, with a great, hungry craving, up to the house that held the motive-power of his new life, and then, with a dull pain he grimly set his face toward—the coast.