Page:November Joe.pdf/111

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NOVEMBER JOE

escarpments of a great wooded mountain, when we saw a light above glimmering through the trees. Soon we reached the lonely cabin in its clearing; the trees closed about it, and the night wind whined overhead through the bareness of the twigs.

Joe knocked at the door, calling at the same time: "It's me. Are you there, Sally?"

The door opened an inch or two. "Is it you, Joe?"

November thrust his right hand with its deep scar across the back through the aperture. "You should know that cut, Sal, you tended it."

"Come in! Come in!"

I followed Joe into the house, and turned to look at Sally. Already I had made a mental picture of her as a strapping young woman, well equipped to take her place in the race of life, but I saw a slim girl with gentle red-brown eyes that matched the red-brown of her rebellious hair, a small face, pale under its weather-tan, but showing a line of milk-white skin above her brows. She was in fact extremely pretty, with a kind of good looks I had not expected, and ten seconds later, I, too, had fallen under the spell

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