CHAPTER XV.
KEEPING TRYST An hundred times that summer, Jack made the story of Aldebaran his own.
He had his rare, exalted moments, when all things seemed possible; when despite his helpless body his spirit walked erect, and faced his future for the time undaunted.

He had his daily struggle with the host of hurts which cut him to the quick, the reminders of his thwarted hopes and foiled ambitions.

Then, too, there were times when the only way he could keep up his courage was to repeat grimly through set teeth, "Tis only one hour at a time that I am called on to endure.

By the bloodstone that is my birthright, I'll keep my oath until the going down of one more sun." Before the summer was over it came to pass that more than one soul, given fresh courage by his brave example, looked upon him as the villagers had upon Aldebaran: "A poor, maimed creature in his outward seeming, and yet so blithely does he bear his lot it seems a kingly spirit dwells among us." Mary's letters to Joyce began to take on a cheerful tone that was vastly encouraging to the toiler in the studio.
"We have revised Emerson," she wrote one July morning.

"It is fully as true to say, 'If one can make a better garden, show a bigger circus or put up a more cheerful front to Fate than his neighbours, though he build his house in Lone-Rock, the world will make a beaten track to his door.' The path it has made to ours is a wide one.