When the proper time comes the curtain is pulled up," he continued, "and you see the stage all arranged like a picture with beautifully painted scenery. Then the actors and actresses come out on the stage and tell a story to each other. They dance and sing, and make love, and have a deuce of a time generally. That's called a play."
"Is it nothing but making love?" asked Davy. "Don't they have anything about hunting, or having sport?"
"Sure!" said Jack. "War and soldiers and shooting, and everything you can think of."
"Are the actresses all as pretty as they say?" asked Mary diffidently.
"Not too close," said Jack. "But you see the lights, and the paint and powder, and the fine clothes show them up pretty fine."
"It gives them a great advantage," she commented.
Mary had other questions to ask about actresses. Davy was not especially interested in this subject, and soon as he got an opening therefor he said, looking sidewise at the leather case by the fire:
"I never heard the banjo played."
Jack instantly produced the instrument, and, tuning it, gave them song after song. Brother and sister listened entranced. Never in their lives had they met anybody like Jack Chanty. He was master of an insinuating tone not usually associated with the blatant banjo. Without looking at her, he sang love-songs to Mary that shook her breast. In her wonder and pleasure she unconsciously let fall the guard over her eyes, and Jack's heart beat fast at what he read there.
Warned at last by the darkness, Mary sprang up. "We must go," she said breathlessly.
Davy, who had come unwillingly, was more unwilling to go. But the hint of "father's" anger was sufficient to start him.
Jack detained Mary for an instant at the edge of the clearing. He dropped the air of the genial host. "I shall not be able to sleep to-night," he said swiftly.
"Nor I," she murmured. "Th—thinking of the theatre," she added lamely.
"When everybody is asleep," he pleaded, "come outside your house. I'll be waiting for you. I want to talk to you alone."
She made no answer, but raised her eyes for a moment to his, two deep, deep pools of wistfulness. "Ah, be good to me! Be good to me," they seemed to plead with him. Then she darted after her brother.
The look sobered Jack, but not for very long. "She'll come," he thought exultingly.
Left alone, he worked like a beaver, chopping and carrying wood for his fire. Under stress of emotion he turned instinctively to violent physical exertion for an outlet. He was more moved than he knew. In an hour, being then as dark as it would get, he exchanged the axe for the banjo, and, slinging it over his back, set forth.
The growth of young poplar stretched between his camp and the esplanade of grass surrounding the buildings of the fort. When he came to the edge of the trees the warehouse was the building nearest to him. Running across the intervening space, he took up his station in the shadow of the corner of it, where he could watch the trader's house. A path bordered by young cabbages and turnips led from the front door down to the gate in the palings. The three visible windows of the house were dark. At a little distance behind the house the sledge dogs of the company were tethered in a long row of kennels, but there was little danger of their giving an alarm, for they often broke into a frantic barking and howling for no reason except the intolerable ennui of their lives in the summer.
There is no moment of the day in lower latitudes that exactly corresponds to the fairylike night-long summer twilight of the North. The sunset glow does not fade entirely, but hour by hour moves around the Northern horizon to the east, where presently it heralds the sun's return. It is not dark, and it is not light. The world is a ghostly place. It is most like nights at home when the full moon is shining behind light clouds, but with this difference, that here it is the dimness of a great light that embraces the world, instead of the partial obscurity of a lesser.
Jack waited with his eyes glued to the door of the trader's house. There was not a breath stirring. There were no crickets, no katydids, no tree-toads to make the night companionable; only the hoot of an owl, and the far-off wail of a coyote to put an edge on the silence. It was cold, and for the time being the mosquitoes were discouraged. The stars twinkled sedulously like busy things.
Jack waited as a young man waits for a woman at night, with his ears strained to catch the whisper of her dress, a tremor in his muscles, and his heart beating thickly in his throat. The minutes passed heavily. Once the dogs raised an infernal clamour, and subsided again. A score of times he thought he saw her, but it was only a trick of his desirous eyes. He became cold to the bones, and his heart sunk. As a last resort he played the refrain of the last song he had sung her, played it so softly none but one who listened would be likely to hear. The windows of the house were open.
Then suddenly he sensed a figure appearing from behind the house, and his heart leapt. He lost it in the shadow of the house. He waited breathlessly, then played a note or two. The figure reappeared, running toward him, still in the shadow. It loomed big in the darkness. It started across the open space. Too late Jack saw his mistake. He had only time to fling the banjo behind him, before the man was upon him with a whispered oath.
Jack thought of a rival, and his breast burned. He defended himself as best as he could, but his blows went wide in the darkness. The other man was bigger than he, and nerved by a terrible, quiet passion. To save himself from the other's blows Jack clinched. The man flung him off. Jack heard the sharp impact of a blow he did not feel. The earth leapt up, and he drifted away on the swirling current of unconsciousness.
What happened after that was like the awakening from a vague, bad dream. He had first the impression of descending a long and tempestuous series of rapids on his flimsily hung raft, to which he clung desperately. Then the scene changed and he seemed to be floating in a ghastly void. He thought he was blind. He put out his hand to feel, and his palm came in contact with the cool, moist earth, overlaid with bits of twig and dead leaves, and sprouts of elastic grass. The earth at least was real, and he felt of it gratefully, while the rest of him still teetered in emptiness.
Then he became conscious of a comfortable emanation, as from a fire; sight returned, and he saw that there was a fire. It had a familiar look; it was the fire he himself had built some hours before. He felt himself, and found that he was covered by his own blanket. "I have had a nightmare," he thought mistily. Then a voice broke rudely on his vague fancies, bringing the shock of complete recollection in its train.
"So, you're coming 'round all right," it said grimly.
At his feet, Jack saw David Cranston sitting on a log.
"I've put the pot on," he continued. "I'll have a sup of tea for you in a minute. I didn't mean to hit you so hard, my lad, but I was mad."
Jack turned his head, and hid it in his arm. Dizzy, nauseated, and shamed, he was as near blubbering at that moment as a self-respecting young man could let himself get in the presence of another man.
"Clean hit, point of the jaw," Cranston went on. "Nothing broke. You'll be as right as ever with the tea."
He made it, and forced Jack to drink of the scalding infusion. In spite of himself, it revived the young man, but it did not comfort his spirit any.
"I'm all right now," he muttered, meaning: "You can go!"
"I'll smoke a pipe wi' you," said Cranston imperturbably. "I
