Beautiful, unappreciated St. Ange! The trees grew, and the scar was healed. The soft, pine-laden breezes touched with heavenly fragrance the dull-faced women, the pathetic children, and the unambitious men. Everything was run down and apparently doomed, until one day the endless chain which encompasses the world, in its turning dropped the Golden Bead of Love into St. Ange! Down deep it sank to the bottom of the crucible. Jude Lauzoon was blinded by it and stung to life; Joyce Birkdale through its power came into the heritage of her soul. Jock Filmer by its magic force was shorn of his poor shield and left naked and unprotected for Fate's crudest darts. John Gaston, working out his salvation in his shack hidden among the pines, was burnt by the divining rays that penetrated to his secret place and spared him not. And then, when things were at their tensest, Ralph Drew came and tuned the discordant notes into sweet harmony. St. Ange became in time a home for many whom despair had marked for its own; a Sanctuary for devoted service. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- ILLUSTRATIONS "You've got the winning cards, my girl ... It's all in the playing now" Frontispiece FACING PAGE "Once I went so far as to go up there with my gun" 76 That pictured Mother and Child were moulding Joyce's character 114 Presently he opened his eyes ... and there sat the girl of his dreams near him 188 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- JOYCE OF THE NORTH WOODS CHAPTER I The man lying flat on the rock which crusted Beacon Hill raised his head with a snake-like motion, and then let it fall back again upon his folded arms. His body had not moved; it seemed part of the stone and moss. The midsummer afternoon was sunny and hot, and the fussy little river rambling through the Long Meadow was talking in its sleep. Lazily it wound around young maples, and ferny groups--it would crush them by and by, poor trusting things--then it would stumble against a rock or pile of loose stones, wake up and repeat the strain it had learned at its mother's breast, far up in the North Woods. "I'm here! here! here! I'll be ready by and by, by, by, by." Then on again, a little faster perhaps, but still dreamily. Children's laughter sounded far below; a slouching man or woman making for the Black Cat bent on business or pleasure, passed now and then; all else was still and seemingly asleep. Again Jude raised his head and gave that quick glance around. Jude was awake at last. Little Billy Falstar had roused him two days before and set the world in a jangle. The child's impish words had struck the scales from Jude's eyes, and the blinding light made him shrink and suffer.