"Does she?" Poor Jock smiled pitifully in his effort to appear unconcerned. "They sit at her feet lost to everything but what she tells 'em. Billy Falstar, before he left to be a camp fiddler, was a reformed brat. She had smote him hip and thigh, and finished him, as far as a career of crime is concerned. Do you know, he went up to see her with his red hair plastered down with lard until it was a dull maroon colour; his square cotton handkercher was perfumed with kerosene, and I tell you he was a sight and a smell to remember; but Drew's sister stood it without a word. She told me afterward that it was a proof conclusive--them's her words--of Billy's redemption. "I saw the brat the day he started for camp. I tell you the ginger was all out of Billy. When he was obliged to swear he did it in whispers." "Poor Billy! He's pretty young to begin camp life. There's good in Billy. I wish Mr. Drew would make Peter send him to school." "That's what he's planning to do." Soon after this, when Jock started to go, he said: "So everything's fit for a spell?" "Everything Jock, until--" They looked at each other mutely. Then Jock put his hand out awkwardly and took Joyce's. "Good-bye," he said quietly. His manner puzzled the girl. "Life's a queer jamboree," he laughed lightly. "It's a heap easier to stand it if you give yourself the hope of cutting it if you find the pace too fast. So 'good-bye' is always in order even if you're going to drop in to-morrow. Good-bye." Joyce walked with him to the door. "Good-bye," she said with a growing doubt in her heart; "good-bye, Jock--and I can never tell you how I thank you." It was many a long day before Joyce was to see Filmer again, and she always felt that she knew it as she saw him pass beyond the pines after that "good-bye." * * * * * Perhaps it was the boyish longing for Christmas cheer that struck such a deadly blow at the heart of Billy, the fiddler, in Camp 7. Perhaps it was the arrow that smites all, sooner or later. Be that as it may, as Christmas drew near the mournful tunes Billy managed to saw from his fiddle got on to the nerves of the men. From remarks aimed at his efforts, pieces of wood and articles of clothing were aimed at him, and Billy's life became a burden in the dull, deep woods. "I can't make jigs come," he whined one evening, "when I'm chock full of hymn tunes." "You'll be chock full of cold lead if you fill this hull camp with them death dirges," warned one man who was bearing about all he could anyway. "I wish to--I just wish I was plugged full of lead--and done for," was Billy's unlooked-for reply; and then, to the surprise of all, he bent his red curls over the fiddle and wept as only a homesick youngster can weep when the barriers of his fourteen years are down, and the flood has its way.