The
moment she had lived and waited for had come! The blank stare gave place
to a broken, crinkling expression; the thin shapeless lips trembled over
the toothless gums, and into the big eyes a wonder broke. A light seemed
to shine forth--and the baby smiled into the adoring face looking down!

To Gaston, the sight was, in a sense, awful. The majesty of Joyce's
attitude toward the change in the child, was the only thing that saved
the occasion.

"Is--it hungry?" he asked with the same dense stupidity he had displayed
before.

"Oh, no!" Joyce laughed gleefully. "Don't you see, he--he knows me.
He--he--_does_ like--me--he's going to stay, and he takes this heavenly
way to show it."

"The deuce he does!" and now Gaston laughed. "He's going to be a comical
imp, if I don't miss my guess. See, he's calming down now, and
regulating his features."

"But--he--smiled!" And just then Jude came around the corner of the
house.

Gaston saw the expression of his face, and something stifled him for a
moment. He wondered if money was always going to be a check to Jude,
after all.

And if it should cease to hold him in leash--then what would happen?

He went away soon after, but he sat up until toward daylight, just
outside his shack. He feared something was going to occur. But nothing
did; and the next thing in Joyce's life story that tugged at his
heart-strings, was the sickness and sudden death of little Malcolm.

CHAPTER IX

It was the evening of the day that the baby had been laid under a slim,
tall young pine tree back of the little house.

Jude felt that he had borne himself heroically throughout the trying
episode.

Never having cared for the child in life, he considered himself a pretty
good father to hide his relief at its early taking off.

As a man of means--what mattered if they were Gaston's means?--he had
had a really impressive funeral for his son.

The Methodist minister from Hillcrest had preached for full an hour over
the tiny casket. Not often did the clergyman have so good an opportunity
to tell the St. Angeans what he thought of them.

He dealt with them along old and approved lines. He had heard of Drew's
religious views and he took this occasion to include a warning of the
damning influence that was about to enter the vicinity with the young
minister's return.

"I warn you now," he thundered over the dead baby, "to make the life of
this infidel, this God-hater, a burden to him."

Fi