Page:Possession (Roche, February 1923).pdf/115

 gusted Grace Jerrold. "Just to show what a childish illusion that is," he said in a sulky, muffled voice, "I shall tell you a little story about a hunting party I was once with. There were six of us deer shooting in the North, and we had taken a keg of Scotch with us. The weather was so cold and rainy that it went much faster than we had expected. We could plainly see that the last week there would be nothing to drink. One of the party got an empty bottle and, unknown to the rest of us, filled it from the keg and hid it, so that on the last day when we should be preparing the cabin for the winter, and have a twelve mile walk through the forest ahead of us he might produce this pleasant surprise. The last week was a sterile one, no deer—nothing to drink but prepared coffee. The last morning broke cold and damp. Everyone out of sorts. Then appeared our friend, beaming, with his bottle of Scotch. Now the sad thing was that the empty bottle he had got, though it had a good Scotch label on it, had once been filled with coal oil, and the idiot had never smelled it. Imagine our feelings when we tasted it! Imagine the abuse we heaped on his head!"

"You would just have to throw it out, wouldn't you, Mr. Vale?"

"No. That's the strange part of it. We kept sniffing it and tasting it to see how bad it was till, if you'll believe me, we ended by drinking every drop of it, and by that time we loved the taste of coal oil."

"How horrible!" said Grace Jerrold, on a note of disgust.

"I don't agree with you, Grace," cried Miss Pearsall. "To me there was something fine about those huntsmen. Their single-mindedness, their subduing of the flesh—"

"To the spirits," suggested Mr. Jerrold.

"It seems to me that such a man," she went on, "would be capable of tremendous self-sacrifice for one he loved."