Summary
A sap-stained fairy-tale unfolds deep among the whispering pines where four axe-swinging titans—Jack, Towzer, Davy and Lively—raise the foundling Sunday as though she were a rag-tag prince rather than a daughter. Cloaked in flannel, she grows half-wild, half-wonder, her laughter ricocheting off cedar trunks while Jacky, the youngest guardian, silently burns with a love he can never name. When propriety drags her to a convent’s starched corridors, the forest’s echo still thrums in her pulse, luring the serpentine Arthur Brinthorpe—a silver-tongued English expatriate whose family crest drips with rot—to dazzle her with promises of manor-house grandeur. Their elopement unravels into brutal candor: no wedding bells, only seduction’s shabby aftermath. Sunday’s fury erupts like a white-hot blade; Arthur’s possessive grip snaps back when Jacky bursts in, and a single gunshot stains the snow-crimson. Enter Lizette, a moonstruck waif whose devotion to Jacky curdles into accusation, pinning the corpse’s weight upon Sunday’s shoulders. Yet bloodlines stretch across the Atlantic; a hawk-eyed aunt ferrets the girl to fog-draped England where she collides with Henry—Arthur’s iron-willed elder, integrity forged in the shadow of disgrace. Guilt becomes her second skin; she flees steerage-class back toward the scent of sawdust and pine, only to find the past has sailed in pursuit. In a candle-lit cabin, knives whisper through planking, loyalty intercepts steel, and every secret finally gushes out like sap from a scored trunk, leaving Henry to weigh brotherly memory against the woman who taught him how absolution can be wrested from shame.
Synopsis
Sunday is a young girl left by a dying father in charge of four rough, but noble-hearted, lumbermen, known as Jack, Towzer, Davy and Lively, who bring her up as a boy. Jacky, the youngest of the quartet, is in love with Sunday, but she regards him only as a brother. The four men finally decide to send her to a convent school. Arthur Brinthorpe, the black sheep of an old English family, traveling in America, meets Sunday, and persuades her to elope. She believes that he intends to take her to his home in England as his wife. Arthur is compelled to confess that he does not intend to marry her. Stunned by this perfidy, Sunday denounces him furiously, and when Arthur seizes her in his arms, she draws her revolver, which he takes from her. The struggle is witnessed by Jacky, who comes to Sunday's rescue, and in doing so kills Arthur. A half-witted girl, named Lizette, who is hopelessly in love with Jacky, sees it. Jacky departs with the Sisters. New adventures, however, are in store for Sunday. Her aunt in England, Mrs. Naresby, has been searching for her, and she is finally discovered in the convent school and brought to England. She meets and falls in love with Henry Brinthorpe, an elder brother of the "ne'er-do-well Arthur." Sunday tries to resist his love, feeling that the dead man stands between them. He demands to know why she will not marry him. She is unable to tell him. Unhappy and wretched, she leaves her aunt's house by night and takes steerage passage tor America. She finally arrives at the lumber camp and surprises the "boys" by rushing into the cabin and telling them she has come home to stay. Henry and his friend, Tom Oxley, follow Sunday to America, and arrive at the cabin. Henry is determined to learn why Sunday has run away from him. Meantime, Lizette, believing that Sunday has returned to marry Jacky, accuses her of the murder of Arthur Brinthorpe, and when Jacky confesses that he committed the deed, Lizette attempts Sunday's life by throwing a knife through the door. Lively, suspecting Lizette's intentions, throws himself in front of Sunday and is wounded. Sunday tells the entire story to Henry, who realizes his brother's guilt and Sunday's innocence, and the story ends with the reconciliation of the lovers.
