When Mr. James North reached his cabin it was dark. As he rebuilt
his fire, and tried to rearrange the scattered and disordered
furniture, and remove the debris of last night's storm, he was
conscious for the first time of feeling lonely. He did not miss
the child. Beyond the instincts of humanity and duty he had really
no interest in its welfare or future. He was rather glad to get
rid of it, he would have preferred to some one else, and yet SHE
looked as if she were competent. And then came the reflection that
since the morning he had not once thought of the woman he loved.
The like had never occurred in his twelvemonth solitude. So he set
to work, thinking of her and of his sorrows, until the word
"Looney," in connection with his suffering, flashed across his
memory. "Looney!" It was not a nice word. It suggested something
less than insanity; something that might happen to a common,
unintellectual sort of person. He remembered the loon, an ungainly
feathered neighbor, that was popularly supposed to have lent its
name to the adjective.
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