“Another hour, Babette, and we shall be home.”
“Yes,” was the reply, “home! That is what North Star is to us, and I wonder you ever left it, Joy.”
“I was afraid,” answered Joy. “Dick Bracknell’s letter startled me. He plainly meant to assert himself and I was glad of Sir Joseph’s summons to England, because it helped me to get away from the complications here.”
“It does not matter much where one goes,” answered Babette philosophically, “one carries one’s real complications with her. Here or there—what matters? The heart is ever the same.”
“Yes, that is true,” answered Joy, thinking of the complications of her own life. “We are the victims of our emotions quite as much as of circumstances.”
“Of our inexperience more than our emotions, I should say,” answered Babette— “of our inexperience and the ruthlessness of those who are prepared to take advantage of them. But here, better than in most places, we can live our own life, untrammelled, and for the most part free from the worser cares. This lodge of ours is like a sanctuary in the wilderness, and the serenity, the woods, the snow and the silences have their own healing for the troubles of life.”
“Yes, but there is something to be said for companionship with one’s own kind. I notice we are always a little excited when we have callers at the Lodge. We——”
A rifle shot cracked in on her words, and before either of them could speak again, a moose broke suddenly from the woods, and plunged down the steep bank not five hundred yards ahead of them. The wolf-dogs in the sleds gave tongue, and notwithstanding the burden behind them, leaped forward. Joy laughed gaily.
“There’s an end of philosophic reflection. The moose is hit. I wonder who——”
A man emerged from the woods, dropped on one knee, and sighted the wide-horned beast. Then his shot rang, and the moose toppled over in the snow. The hunter stood up and caught sight of the oncoming party. He scrutinized it carefully for a moment and then waved his hand.