"I've just reached that conclusion myself, Billy," he said, with every trace of his past mirth gone.
Hatred fled before the sympathy he felt flowing from Jock to him. He wanted to cry; wanted to fling himself upon his companion and "own up," but Jock anticipated all his emotions.
"See here, kid," he said in a voice new to St. Angé's knowledge of Jock; "you're not the fellow to grudge a poor devil an hour or so of heaven. There's the hope of an eternity of it for you; but for me there's going to be only--the memory of this hour. Shake hands, old man, and take this from me, straight. Keep yourself _fit_ to touch. Lay hold of that and never let go. The more you care, the more you'll curse yourself, if you don't. It's the only decent offering a man can take to a woman. Everything else he can hope to gain afterward. A place for her, money, and all the rest; but if he goes to her with dirty hands and a heart full of shame, nothing can make up for it--nothing!
"Billy--I'd give you all I ever hoped to have here or hereafter if I could begin to-night where you are--and with the power to _want_ to keep straight."
Billy shivered and looked dumbly, pathetically into the sad face above him. He had nothing to say. When Jock next spoke he was more like himself.
"Billy, will you see to a little business for me, and keep mum?"
This was quite in the line of the over-burdened Billy, and he accepted off-hand.
"Don't yer!" advised the boy magnanimously. "I ain't ever going to care again. You can stay here." Jock forbore to smile, but he laid his hand on Billy's shoulder.
"There's two big stacks of young pine trees up to my shack done round in bagging and ticketed to a place down the State. They're Christmas trees for poor kids, and I want you to see to getting them off for me to-morrow or next day, and if Tom Smith airs any remarks, you let on as how they hailed from the bungalow; for that's God's truth, when all's told."
"They'll go, Jock, you bet!" Billy gulped.
Curiosity was dead within him. Human suffering gave him an insight that soared above idle questioning.
"And Billy, there's another thing. I want you to go to Gaston's shack; tote water and wood for Joyce--and keep your mouth shut. And lay this by in your constitution. Gaston is a man so far above anything God ever created round here, that you can't understand him, but you _can_ try to chase off the dirty insects that want to sting him. Catch on?"