The Prescott daily news., 1918-04-26


 woods.
 September and October trooped past, and as they marched the willow thickets and poplar groves grew vel low and brown, and carpeted the floor of the woods with fallen leaves. Shrub and tree barred gaunt limbs to every autumn wind. Only the spruce and pine stood forth In their year-round habiliments of green. The days short ened steadily. The nights grew long, and bitter with frost. Snow fell, blank eting softly the dead leaves. Old Win ter cracked his whip masterfully over all the North.
 Day by day, between tasks, and often while she worked, Hazel's eyes would finger on the edges of the clear ing. Often at night she would lift her selr on elbow at some unexpected sound. her heart leaping wild with ex- pectation. And always she would lie down again. and sometimes press her clenched hand to her lips to keep back the despairing cry. Always she ad- Jured herself to be patient, to wait | doggedly as Bill would have waited, to make due allowance for immensity of distance, for the manifold delays which might overtake a messenger faring across those silent miles or man hur- rying to his home. Many things might hold him back. But he would come. It was inconceivable that he might not come
 Meantime, with only a dim con sciousness of the fact, she underwent marvellous schooling in adaptation, Self-restraint. She had work of sort, tasks such us every housewife finds self-imposed in her own home. She was seldom lonely. She marveled at that. It was unique in her expert ence. All her old dread of the pro- found silence, the painless forests which infolded like prison wall, dis tances which seemed impossible of span, had vanished. In its place had fallen over her an abiding sense of peace, of security. The lusty storm winds whistling about the cabin sang restful lullaby. When the wolves lifted their weird. melancholy plaint to the cold. star-jeweled skies. she lis tened without the old shudder. These things, which were wont to oppress her. to send her imagination reeling along morbid ways, seemed but na- tural aspect of life, of which she her | self was a part.
 Often, sitting before her glowing fireplace. watching a. flame kindled with her own hands with wood she herself carried from the pile outside. she pondered this. It defied her pow CTS of self-analysis. She could only accept 1t as fact, md be glad. Gran vile and all that Granville stood for had withdrawn to more or less re- mote background. She could look over the frost-spangled forests and feel that she lacked nothing-nothing save her mate. There was no impression of transient abiding; no chating to be elsewhere, to do otherwise. It was home, she reflected; perhaps that was why.
 A simple routine served to fill her days. She kept her house shining, she cooked her food, carried in her fuel. Except on days of fortnight storm she put on her snowshoes. and with little rife In the crook of her arm prowled at random through the woods partly because 1t gave her pleasure to range sturdily afield, partly for the | physical brace of eXertion in the crisp air. Otherwise she curled comfortably before the fireplace and sewed, or read something out of Bills catholic as- sortment of books.
 It was given her. also. to learn the true meaning of neighborliness. that kindiness of spirit which is stifled by stress in the crowded places, and stlm- ulated by like stress amid surround ingS where life Is noncomplex. direct, where cause and effect tread on each others heels. Every day, if she failed to drop into their cabin, came one or her neighbors to see if all were well with her.
 Quite us matter of course Jake kept steadily replenished for her n great pile of firewood. Or they would come. babies and all. bundled in furs of Jake's trapping. jinglng up of an evening behind the frisky bays. And while the bays munched hay in Roar ing Bill Wagstaffs stable, they would cluster about the open hearth. popping corn for the children, talking. always with cheerful optimism.
 Behind Lauer's mild blue eyes turk ed mind that burrowed necessarily to the roots of things. He had lived and worked and read, and, pondering