With his hands thrust deep into his pockets and his mouth pulled down
at the corners, he stood leaning back against the desk shelf and
forced himself to look down across the wooded slopes to the valley,
where a light twinkled now like a fallen star. After a while he found
that he could see once more the beauty, and not so much the
loneliness. Then, just to prove to himself that he was not going to be
bluffed by the silence, he began to whistle. And the tune carried
with it an impish streak of that grim humor in which, so they tell
us, the song was born. It is completely out of date now, that song,
but then it was being sung around the world. And sometimes it was
whistled just as Jack was whistling it now, to brace a man's courage
against the press of circumstances.

"It's a long way to Tipperary," sang Jack, when he had whistled the
chorus twice; and grinned at the joke upon himself. After that he
began to fuss with the oil stove and to experiment with the food they
had left him, and whistled deliberately all the while.

In this wise Jack Corey lost himself from his world and entered into
his exile on a mountain top.




CHAPTER SIX

MISS ROSE FORWARD


Times were none too prosperous with the Martha Washington Beauty Shop,