"Want something to eat, lad?"
"I can't eat," explained Peter huskily. "My mouth is swollen shut."
It was then Simon McQuarrie's hard lips touched Peter's cheek—the first kiss he had given in many years.
"Good night," he whispered. "You're Donald McRae's son—every inch of you!" And Peter listened to his heavy feet as he slowly descended the ladder.
Themoon did not come up that night. Darkness shut in the earth, and with it came a warm and sullen stillness, broken only by low intonations of distant thunder, advancing over the roofs of the forest. A long time after Simon had gone Peter went to the window and sat staring out into the gloom. The air was drowsily heavy and bore with it the cooling breath of rain. After a little a swift whispering ran through the forest and the first gentle patter of raindrops fell on the cabin roof. The thunder crashed nearer and vivid flashes of lightning cut like flaming knives through the blackness. In a moment, it seemed to Peter, the storm broke in a deluge that set the log walls atremble. It beat straight down, and did not come in at the window. Peter did not stir. As long ago as he could remember his father had taught him to be unafraid of the awesomeness and beauty of thunder and lightning, and many times they had watched a storm together until the boy was thrilled by the significance and the mystery of it.
It was his father he missed tonight, the immeasurable thrill of his voice, his presence and his love. Without reason his eyes strained questingly in thosebrief moments when the lightning flashes filled the world with a white radiance. In that light he could see the mill, stark and vivid, like a skeleton illumined by fire, the trees, the cabins, the stub in which the flying squirrels lived, and the edge of the forest. He did not miss that half of his vision which he had lost in his fight with Aleck Curry; he had forgotten the fight, and even Mona Guyon. For a time his thoughts were alone with his father, and with his yearning and his loneliness an unreasonable hope filled his soul—the hope that his father would keep his promise and that out in the glare of the lightning he would see him coming from the forest into the clearing. His heart ached for that. He did not know it, but under his breath he was sobbing a little.
It was the truth, forcing itself upon him, the sullen, terrible truth, driving him back from the window and sending him creeping to his blankets, where he lay huddled and still. He had never hated anyone, not even Aleck Curry. But he was beginning to hate somebody—something—now. He hated the men who were after his father, and he was beginning vaguely to hate that controlling force which both his father and Simon McQuarrie had told him was the law. If his father had only taken him! If they were only together now, away out there in the forest, under a log or snuggled in the shelter of an overturned root—anywhere—just so they were together!
Why had his father lied to him, promising him hewould come back in a day or two? Why had he sent him on alone to Five Fingers? Peter choked back the sob in his throat.He knew.It was because his father loved him—because he knew that he could never return, and wanted him to have a home with Simon McQuarrie.
Burying his face in his arm, Peter gave up to his grief. It was a silent, choking grief that ate into his heart but brought no cry to his lips.
The thunder and lightning passed and the rain settled into a steady patter on the roof. It was like hundreds of gentle fingers tapping within a few feet of Peter's head. It comforted him in his aloneness and his grief. Mona was listening to that same friendly patter on the cedar shingles. Tomorrow he would see her again, and his heart grew warm. A part of her seemed to come into the darkness of his room, and he could see her eyes shining and feel the touch of her hand—and the kiss. And afterward he fell asleep, stirred by the strange and comforting sensation that Mona was near him.
But in sleep he lost her. He dreamed that he was trying to steal away from Five Fingers to go in search of his father, but again and again Simon McQuarrie caught him and brought him back. At last success came. It was night, and he was crawling out through his window into the moonlight, with a pack on his back. He jumped to the ground and made for the woods. And then a strange thing happened. Where his fatherhad left him he found footprints on the earth. They were very clear, and shining, as if made of bright silver, and they reached a long distance ahead of him through the forest. It puzzled him that his own feet left no trail at all while his father's trail was so clear.
Days and nights seemed to pass as he followed persistently this silvery trail. Then he came to a wonderful forest where the trees were so tall their tops seemed lost against the sky. He walked on flowers. Great masses of purple violets crushed under his feet, roses filled the air with sweetness, wild geraniums nodded and bowed to him, and crimson splashes of fire-flowers carpeted long aisles and broad chambers of this mysterious paradise.
He came at last to a waterfall. It did not roar, like waterfalls he had known, but fell with a rippling song. Near the waterfall was a cabin, and straight to the door of the cabin led the silvery trail! Peter followed it. He opened the door and went in and his father was there. He turned to greet Peter and did not seem surprised. His face was smiling and happy, and tender with the old cheer and the old love.
"I thought you would come soon, Peter," he said. "I've been waiting for you."
It was then Peter awakened. The patter of rain on the roof had ceased. The night had cleared and was filled with stars, and a sweet warmth came in through the open window. His dream had been overwhelminglyreal, and it left him with his heart beating strangely. He did not sleep again but lay awake until the stars began to fade in the gray light of dawn. Then he dressed himself, making no sound that might disturb Simon. When he looked down from his window he almost expected to see the marks he had made in his dream-leap. And it could be done—that jump! He crept out backward, lowered himself full length from the windowsill and dropped easily to the rain-softened earth.
He went toward the stream which came down from the timbered hills and ridges. The birds were beginning to sing, the robins first, twittering their sweetest of all songs, with eyes half closed. It grew gently, each soft note increasing in strength until the invisible chorus filled the clearing with its welcome to the day. A thrush joined in. Bright-winged bluebirds flew ahead of him, and sweet-voiced brush sparrows cheeped and fluttered in their coverts, waiting for the sun. Even the water dripping from the trees held in its sound the cadence of whispered song.
And as if this melody held a spell which they were powerless to combat, or which inspired them to silence, the raucous jays were still and aloof, the whisky jacks waited in fluffy brown balls, a cock-of-the-wood clung to the side of a tree, his plumed head and powerful bill making no sound upon the wood, and ahead of Peter a gray owl retreated to a deeper and darker hiding-place.
The forest was a cathedral, and its symphony seized upon Peter's soul and lifted it on a great wave of anticipation and hope.
His father was listening to the birds, too. He was waiting for the sunrise. And a stirring thought came to Peter. If his father did not return, he would do what he had done in his dream—go in search of him. He was sure he could find him.
He undressed at the edge of a pool in which the water was warm enough for a swim, and came out of it a little later shivering—but still thinking. The early rays of the sun were breaking over the tree-tops when he returned to the clearing. His bad eye was half open and most of the swelling was gone from his lips. Simon was getting breakfast and was surprised that Peter should come through the door instead of down the ladder.
During the next hour his shrewd eyes saw a change in the boy. Peter was restless and asked questions. Where would his father be likely to go? Had he said anything about it in his letter to Simon?
The Scotchman shook his head, guessing a little of what was in Peter's mind. He explained the vastness of the forests. They reached a thousand miles north and twice that far east and west, and one might lose himself in them all his life. Their bigness did not discourage Peter.
"I think I can find my father," he said. "If he doesn't come back I'm going to try."
The thought gripped him more tenaciously as the early hours of the morning passed. Simon brushed and mended him, and said he should have new clothes as quickly as they could be brought from the settlement on the railroad, and he talked of Aleck's defeat, and of Mona, and of the wonderful beaver colony two miles away, but the new thrill in Peter's blood swept over all other things that might have interested him.
He would not tell Simon, but he was going in search of his father—soon. It might be that night, or the next, if he could get things together for a pack.
The sun was well up when he saw Mona come out of the Gourdon cabin, and he went across the clearing to meet her. He was a little upset, for he would have to apologize for running away from her in such a boorish fashion yesterday. Mona's appearance this morning set his heart aflutter. She seemed almost as old as Adette Clamart, and not at all like the little fighting comrade who had helped him whip Aleck Curry at their first meeting. She was dressed in spotless white, and her long hair rippled and shone in the sun, and her dark eyes were so beautiful that for a moment or two Peter could find nothing to say as she looked at him.
Mona was not entirely unconscious of her disconcerting loveliness, and her eyes shone and the color grew prettier in her cheeks when she saw its effect on Peter.
"This is my Sunday dress," she said, helping him out of his embarrassment. "Do you like it?"
Peter shifted, and thought quickly. "You look like a snowbird, one of the kind with a black topknot," he complimented her. "What do you think ofme?" And he turned so that she could see where Simon had mended his rusty clothes.
The sparkle died out of Mona's eyes, and in the moment when his back was toward her Peter did not see the look of pity and tenderness that took its place, and with it a shadow of something else, as if he had hurt her.
"I put on this dress for you. That's what I think of you, Peter."
"I got better clothes," he explained, "but we came away so fast we didn't have time to bring them."
"I'm glad you didn't. I like you the way you are. Do you like me, Peter—really?"
"A lot."
"How much?"
Peter turned over various terms of measurement in his mind. "Next to my father," he said.
"Then why did you run away from me when I was in the kitchen with Adette Clamart?" she asked.
Peter flushed. "I dunno. Guess I didn't like to be laughed at. And the baby—he didn't know who I was."
The soft notes of a bell tolled over the clearing, and Peter drew himself erect and breathed a little tensely as he listened to it. "I used to hear a church bell likethat, a long time ago," he said, softly. "I can just remember it."
She touched his arm as they listened. "I was coming to take you to church. Father Albanel says you promised."
She started down the slope, walking slowly, with Peter at her side. He thought it was interesting how the sound of the bell suddenly opened the doors of Five Fingers.
Pierre Gourdon came out of his cabin with his wife, and Josette was dressed in white, like Mona; and Marie Antoinette, waiting with Joe and their two children to greet them, looked like a slim white angel to Peter. Even Geertruda Poulin, who was almost as wide as she was high, wore a dress as white as the gull's wings down in Middle Finger Inlet.
The children were prim and starched and the men were in clothes which Peter had not seen them wear before, their faces shining with the effect of lather and sharp razors.
And loveliest of all the girls and women, Peter thought, was Mona—lovelier even than Adette Clamart, who came hurrying to them with laughing eyes and red lips and rebellious curls dancing about her pink cheeks to beg Peter's pardon for laughing at him the preceding afternoon.
To Peter's infinite dismay Adette seized his head between her two small hands and kissed him squarely on the eye which had looked so funny to her yesterday.
"There, I'm sorry, Peter," she said. "But you did look so funny."
She was gone like one of the dainty, golden canaries that nested in the clearing, running to catch up with Jame, her husband, who had Telesphore in his arms.
Fire leaped into Mona's cheeks.
"I won't have Adette Clamart doing that," she protested indignantly. "If your eye needs kissing——"
Peter was wiping it with the back of his hand.
"That's right, wipe it away," she encouraged spitefully. "I hate her!"
Peter said nothing. But he saw Mona's lovely eyes flash in Adette's direction when they were seated on one of the wooden benches in the little church. Adette smiled mischievously and nodded her head, but Mona made no response except to tilt her pretty chin a little higher in the air and look straight ahead of her to the platform where Father Albanel was ready to begin the service.
The little missioner's face was even rosier and jollier than yesterday, it seemed to Peter, and he was smiling and nodding and rubbing his hands as if this particular hour was the happiest of his life.
Peter, looking secretly about him, was impressed by the fact that this was unlike any other Sunday meeting he had ever attended. He missed the serious and almost awesome solemnity of the other similar occasions he could remember. Here everyone was free and easy and refreshingly happy. Even Simon McQuarrie'semotionless face was more gentle, and he smiled when he saw Peter, and a ripple of laughter ran easily through the gathering when young Telesphore crowed delightedly and waved his arms in an embracing greeting to all about him. Then came the tinkle of a bell, and suddenly the room was very quiet.
What happened after that was like a dream to Peter, and it seemed constantly to be awakening something new and happier within him. He had never heard singing like that which filled the little church. Mona's voice was clear and soft as the crested warbler's song which he loved; and when she looked at him and whispered, "Sing, Peter," his courage came to him, and a little at a time he lifted his voice until his boyish tenor rose clearly at her side. When they sat down she was nearer to him, so near that her wonderful white dress crumpled close against him and a tress of her shining hair fell upon his hand.
"I love your singing, Peter," she whispered to him again.
His heart beat fast and his hand twitched nervously under the silken caress of her hair. Until now—this hour when they sat so close together in the church—he had not felt the deeper stir of that emotion which was growing in him. Surreptitiously his fingers closed about the soft tress of hair. Mona did not know it, no one knew it but himself, and he looked straight ahead while his heart beat still faster and the warm thrill of his secret sent the blood into his face.
Father Albanel was talking. And in a trance Peter listened. What struck him, and what he remembered so clearly afterward, was the way in which the little missioner talked about all living things, as if the flowers and trees had hearts and souls, and God loved the forests and all wild things just as much as He loved people. Peter had heard his father say many of those same things, only in a different way—for Father Albanel's voice was like deep music that reached down into the soul, and there was no whisper or stir among those who listened to him.
He seemed to be looking straight at Peter when he talked about Faith, and what faith meant in the lives of men and women and children; and to make this clear to the children of Five Fingers he told the legend of Nepise, the beautiful Indian maiden, who was known as the Torch-Bearer. It seemed to Peter the missioner was describing Mona, for Nepise was the loveliest girl among all her people, with eyes that were pools of beauty and hair that fell about her like a shining black garment. The story became a tragic and living thing to him; he saw the plague-stricken Indian people, and when Nepise died the effect upon him was like a shock. But she had made her dying people a promise—a wonderful promise!—to come back in spirit, bearing with her the Torch of Life, and with this flaming torch she would go from tepee to tepee and from village to village, and all who had faith in her would see her and to them would come health and happiness. And Nepisekept her promise, and forever after that, and up to this very day, the Indian maiden was known throughout the wilderness as the Torch-Bearer.
When Father Albanel had finished Peter looked at Mona. Her red lips were parted, her eyes were aglow, and in her white throat a little heart seemed beating. And when they stood up again to sing his fingers still held the soft tress of hair, and this time Mona saw it, and smiled at him, and Peter was no longer afraid of his secret.
After Father Albanel's benediction Mona led Peter a little hurriedly from the meeting-house, but without losing her prim dignity so long as she thought Adette Clamart's eyes might be upon her.
"I shan't speak to her all day!" she confided in Peter.
They passed near the tug and saw Aleck Curry fishing from the stern, and Mona told him that neither Aleck nor his father ever came to church. Then they came to a narrow foot trail that was new to Peter and for half an hour walked slowly out on a green-timbered point of land until they reached the big lake. It was the finest view Peter had ever had of Superior. The great sea seemed to engulf the world, and away out there were three white dots which were ships under canvas. It was warm and calm, and he was puzzled by a sullen, booming roar until Mona led the way down a break in the cliff and showed him the Pit, where the surf and undertows boiled and rumbled even in fair weather. And in storm——
She tried to tell him what it was then, when the great rocks were like so many monsters, grinding things to pieces, and when nothing that lived could exist for more than a minute or two in what Pierre Gourdon called the maelstroms. They found a clean white rock, worn smooth by the water, and sat down, and Peter wondered at the change which came into Mona's face.
"Can you remember your mother, Peter?" she asked softly.
He was silent for a moment, and then said, "I've seen her a good many times when I was asleep."
"Do you still see her?"
"I did two nights ago."
"Is she pretty?"
"Yes."
"So is mine." She folded her hands in her lap and added quietly: "Out there is where my mother and father were drowned. Uncle Pierre tied me to his back and brought me ashore."
Then she told him the story of the wreck of the sailing ship, and how Aunt Josette and Marie Antoinette and Father Albanel and all the people of Five Fingers said it was a miracle that even one should come ashore alive. And she was that one.
"Father Albanel sometimes comes down here with me," she said. "I love him. He always tells me about Nepise. Isn't that a pretty name, Peter? It means Willow Bud. But after she died and her spirit came back with the torch they called her Suskuwao,which means the Torch-Bearer. I love her, too. Do you?"
Peter nodded. "I was thinking of you," he said desperately, trying to get the choking thought out of him. "Father Albanel was looking at you when he told about the Indian girl. That's what you've been to me since I come—a—a sort of torch-bearer, like he said she was. I dunno what I'd have done if it hadn't been for you."
It was out, and for a moment or two the suffocating realization of what he had said made it difficult for him to breathe easily. Mona did not look at him. Her shining eyes were fixed steadily upon the vastness of the lake.
"Was that why you touched my hair, Peter?"
"I guess so."
"You like me—like that?"
He nodded again, finding the moment too tremendous for words. And this time Mona was looking at him. There was an earnestness in her face which made her seem older to Peter. Her eyes were a woman's eyes, calm and steady in their gaze, as they studied him for a moment.
"And I like you, Peter," she said then, "I like you so much—that I never want you to go away from Five Fingers."
"And I never want to go," he said. "Not if my father comes back."
"He will come!"
Her voice was quick and sure and filled with a vibrant ring that sent a little tremble through him. She was sitting very straight, and a gust of wind stirred her hair so that it rippled and floated about her, and Peter—looking at her with wide eyes and swiftly beating heart—thought of Father Albanel, and of Nepise the Torch-Bearer, and the beautiful faith the little missioner had visioned entered into him and he believed. And the strange and thrilling impulse came to him to put his hand to that soft cloud of Mona's hair and tell her that he believed. But he did not move, nor did he speak. For a space Mona seemed to be far away from him, gazing at something which he could not see out beyond the turmoil of the Pit. Her fingers were interlocked in her lap, and not until the voice of Jame Clamart hallooed down from the top of the cliff was the spell of silence broken.
Mona started but did not look up. She knew Adette was there, smiling down at them and ready to wave her hand. Quite calmly she said to Peter:
"It's that Adette Clamart. Will you promise never to let her kiss you again?"
"Sure—I promise," said Peter.
"As long as you live?"
"As long as I live."
"Cross your heart, Peter!"
Devoutly Peter took the solemn oath.
"I'm glad," said Mona. "I don't like kissing—but if it has to be done I'll do it!" And a fiery little note inher voice was so combatively possessive that Peter suddenly felt himself a helpless but willing slave in chains.
And in the days and weeks that followed his first Sunday in the settlement this bondage was stronger than the hungering loneliness for his father which pulled him at times toward the big forests of the north. Mona's world became his world. He began to fit into its play, its duties, and the family communism of its environment. He went to school. At odd hours he worked about the mill and helped in the spring planting, and later in the tilling of the soil.
In the passing of the summer Mona and Peter spent much of their time together in the cool depths of the forests. On these adventurings they were inseparable, and their favorite haunt, specially on Sunday afternoons, was a beaver colony a mile and a half up the shore of the lake and a little back in the rough ridges and hills. The beaver settlement was Mona's own property, and it was one of the laws of Five Fingers that no one should despoil it with trap or gun. It was five years ago, Mona told Peter, that four old beavers emigrated from some one of the colonies back in the hills and she and Pierre discovered them building a dam at this place. There were now over thirty of them. A long time ago they had ceased to be afraid of her, and some of them were so friendly she could touch them with her hand. But they were alarmed when Peter came with her and for days scarcely a head would show when he was about. Very slowly and withextreme caution they began to accept him as a part of Mona, and the first cool breath of autumn was in the nights before they would openly disclose themselves or play on their slides or proceed with the varied duties of their lives when he was watching the big dark pool in which they had built their homes.
InSeptember a sinister and foreboding gloom seemed to creep out of the wilderness surrounding Five Fingers.
The golden autumn, with its soft Indian summer and its radiance of color, died almost before it was born. The birch leaves did not turn yellow and gold but stopped at a rusty brown; the poplar leaves curled up and began to fall from their stems before the first frost; mountain ash berries were pink instead of red, and heavy fogs settled like wet blankets between the ridges, while in the swamps the rabbits were dying in hundreds and thousands of the mysterious "seven years' sickness."
The men at Five Fingers, and especially Pierre Gourdon and Dominique Beauvais, who read the wilderness as if it were a book, regarded these matters with anxious eyes. It was Pierre who called attention to the going of the bluebirds a month before their time, and noted first that the red squirrels were gathering great stores of cones, and that the robins were restless and uneasy and were assembling in the flocks which presaged sudden flight.
Then, one sunset, a great flock of wild geese wenthonking south. They were high and flying very fast.
Pierre Gourdon pointed up. "When the wild geese race like that in September—it means a bad winter. Only twice have I seen it. The last time was two years before we came to Five Fingers—a year of starvation and plague; and the other time——" He shuddered, and shrugged his shoulders, for that other time was in boyhood, when his mother and father had died back in the forests, and he had dragged himself starving and nearly dead to Ste. Anne de Beaupré.
Colder nights came, filled with moaning winds, and the days were darkened by ash-gray skies through which the sun seldom shone warmly, and more and more frequently came the honk of geese racing south. Peter could hear them at night, in darkness and when the stars were shining, coming from the north, crying down their solemn notes of passage from the high trails of the air.
And these same nights he heard the wolves howl back in the hollows and ridges and deeper hunting grounds of the forests, and Pierre Gourdon listened uneasily to the cold, hard note in their voices, and said to Dominique:
"The wolves will run lean this winter, and when hunger trails the wolves, famine is not far behind."
But it was the dying of the rabbits more than the crying of the wolves that worried them at first. The plague-stricken animals were lying everywhere, evenup to the steps of the cabins, and one day Peter counted so many in a corner of the swamp that Simon McQuarrie's eyes widened a little with doubt when he told his story. Once every seven or nine years had the rabbit plague swept on its devastating way through the wilderness, but never had Pierre or Dominique or Simon seen it so destructive as this year, and the nearer howling of the wolves and the strange, clammy nights with their deathlike fogs roused in Pierre Gourdon's heart the ghosts of old superstitions and old fears put there in tragic days when he was a boy.
And then came a night when the world seemed filled with wet smoke, and on that night the gray Canada geese came down from the north in a multitude so great that they filled the sky over Five Fingers with a winged deluge, and thousands of them dropped into the inlet and the clearing to rest. Their honking was a bedlam which made sleep impossible, and with the dawn Peter could see them darkening the fields and the water of Middle Finger Inlet. When the various companies and regiments began taking wing the sound they made was a steady thunder that sent a weird and thrilling shudder through earth and air. There were ten thousand pair of wings in that southward moving host, Pierre Gourdon said. Peter had never thought there were so many wild geese in the world and it puzzled him that not one of them was killed by the men at Five Fingers.
"A wild goose mates but once," Pierre explained."If his mate dies, he does not take another, but lives alone for the rest of his life. Memory and loyalty like that men do not have, and so it is a crime to kill them." Then he added, looking up thoughtfully at one of the winged triangles racing through the sky, "And the gray goose lives a hundred years!"
In October what were left of the big snowshoe rabbits began to turn white, and the wind kept steadily in the north. Snow fell early. All through November the big lake was lashed by fierce gales; the Pit roared and whipped itself into furies, and the gulls were gone entirely from Middle Finger Inlet. In a single night, it seemed to Peter, winter came. And from the beginning it was a black, ominous winter. For days at a time there was no sun. The sky was shut in by a gray canopy of cloud. When snow fell it was hard and biting, and riding with the wind, it stung the flesh like fine shot.
In December came a change. The winds died, the skies cleared a little, and day and night it snowed until the wilderness was smothered and the evergreen forests bent to the snapping point under their burden. Trails were closed and the hollows between ridges were filled. One day Poleon Dufresne snowshoed in from the railroad settlement, half dead from exhaustion and bearing the news that all the world was shut out by snow, and that it lay twenty feet deep in the open places. And quietly he gave other news to Pierre Gourdon and Dominique and Simon McQuarrie. The dreadedplague of the wilderness—the smallpox—had already begun to stalk through the northland.
Following the deep snows came a cold so intense that the men no longer ran the hazard of frosted lungs by working in the woods, and all wild life seemed to have become extinct. Between the lake and the settlements along the line of steel one could scarcely have found the trail of a cloven hoof, for the deer and moose were yarded deep and struggled breast-high against snow for the bush-browsing that kept them alive, while the caribou, milling against wind and storm, had left the snow-smothered country for feeding grounds farther north. It was a winter that began—first of all—with starvation. The icy coating of the trees left no budding for the grouse; small creatures smothered in thousands under the hardening snow crust which could soon bear the weight of a man; foxes and ermine gnawed bark in their hunger; with the rabbits gone, owls died of a sickness which ravages them in times of forest famine—and the empty stomachs of wolves brought them nearer and nearer to the clearing until frightened horses broke halters in their stalls and cattle bellowed in their terror.
Peter had never heard wolves as they cried out now. Sometimes their wail of hunger was almost a sobbing in the night, and again it was bitter and vengeful as hoof and horn beat them back from some yarded stronghold of moose and deer.
Each day and week Peter came to understand moreof the tragedy through which he was passing. It was one of the "black years." Father Albanel came to the settlement early in January; he was thin and haggard, his eyes deep-set, the rosy color gone from his face. In the little church he asked the people of Five Fingers to offer up prayer for the thousands who were sick and the hundreds who were dying through all the great wilderness from Hudson Bay to the Athabasca and from Big Lake to the Barren Lands. Over all that country the plague was raging, sweeping like a forest fire from tepee to cabin, until in certain far places the great Hudson Bay Company could no longer bury its dead, and masterless dogs ran with the wild things in the forests. Pierre Gourdon's face was almost as haggard as Father Albanel's, and Mona called Peter's attention to it, with a tense and strange look in her eyes.
"I overheard Uncle Pierre and Aunt Josette when they were talking last night and they said they weren't afraid for themselves but that they were afraid for me," she said. "Why should they be, Peter? I don't get sick easily."
"You're a girl, that's why," he explained.
"But if I should get sick—what would you do? Would you dare to come and see me?"
"I'd come."
"Even if it was the plague?"
"I'd still come."
Old Simon held Peter off at arm's length
OLD SIMONheld Peter off at arm's length, hisstern face working in a strange way
Peter McRae had come home
PETER McRAEhad come home and a whisperof gladness ran among the crowd
"I'd like to have you, Peter. If I was sick and you didn't come, I think it would make me feel so badly I wouldn't get well."
And that night, with the wolves wailing at its doors, the blighting hand of the red plague fell upon Five Fingers!
It touched Geertruda Poulin first, and Jeremie, her husband, nailed a red cloth over his cabin door to keep the children at a distance, and that rag, fluttering in the winds, soon filled their hearts with a greater terror than if they had seen aloup-garouhaunting the edge of the forest or the grim hunters of theChasse-galerieriding through the gloomy sky, for they were told that to go near it meant death. And then, three days later, little Tobina fell ill, and with a pale, brave face and eyes in which there was no sign of fear Marie Antoinette went into the plague-stricken cabin to nurse them. After that Joe Gourdon's face was like a mask carven out of stone until the night when Jame Clamart pounded at his door and cried out the terrible news that Adette was down with the fever. And that midnight Josette calmly kissed Pierre and Mona good-by and went to her. Until she was gone Pierre held back the sob in his throat—then it escaped him, and he held Mona close, so close that it hurt her. It was on a Sunday morning, bitterly cold and filled with gusty winds, that Jeremie Poulin staggered out from his door and flung up his arms to the sky, and the word passed from cabin to cabin that Geertruda was dead.
Alone, barring all others from their company, Simon McQuarrie and Father Albanel dug with picks and grub-hoes the first new grave in the little cemetery. Chunk by chunk they broke out the frozen earth, and when it was dark—so dark no eyes could see them—they helped Jeremie Poulin carry his dead over the clearing and upon their knees prayed with him at the grave-side. After that they lived in one of the barns, visiting only the sick and the dead, and each morning and evening Simon would shout to Peter through the megaphone of his hands, asking him if he felt pain or dizziness or fever, and warning him to stay in the cabin. Then Sara Dufresne and two of her three children were stricken and Jean Croisset died so suddenly that the shock of it stopped every heart in Five Fingers. Pounding of hammers came from the barn, and the next morning there was another mound of brown and frozen earth in the cemetery. A day later Dominique Beauvais, with his house full of children, nailed up the red badge of sickness over his cabin door.
Each day Peter saw Mona. They spent their hours together, and Pierre Gourdon watched them as a hawk watches its young. At night they sat at their windows, for after Jean's death the skies cleared and a glorious moon filled the world with light. And one night Peter heard the hammers pounding again, and in the gray of dawn—still sleepless and wide-eyed—he saw Father Albanel and Simon and Jeremie Poulin come from Dominique Beauvais's cabin bearing a long, grim thingamong them; and when they had reached the burial slope he saw them turn back, and enter the cabin again, and come forth once more with their shoulders bent under a burden. Peter's heart choked him. He sobbed and clutched his hands at his breast. It was Félipe and Dominique, the two youngest of the Beauvais children, whom he had seen carried to the burial plot.
Sobbing, he ran toward Mona's home. The door opened and Pierre Gourdon came out. Peter stopped a few paces away, for there was something in Pierre's face that frightened him. At first he thought it must be the madness of the fever; then his ears caught words, strange, hard words that froze his blood and that seemed to come with a mighty effort from Pierre's ghastly face. Mona was sick! She was in bed—and he must return to Simon McQuarrie's cabin and not come again within breathing distance of the house! Peter moved closer to the door, powerless to speak, and Pierre thrust him back so roughly that he fell to the ground.
"Go away!" he commanded, raising a hand as if to strike the boy.
Through the open door Peter had a glimpse of Josette's face looking out at him, so white and haggard that for a moment he thought it was an old woman's face. He cried out to her but in the same moment she was gone and there came no answer.
Then he spoke half defiantly to Pierre.
"I want to see Mona," he said. "I promised her I'd come if she was sick."
"Go!" said Pierre again, pointing sternly toward Simon McQuarrie's cabin. "You can come halfway to learn how Mona is, but if you come this near again I shall have you taken from Five Fingers!"
Peter drew slowly away, staring in horror at Pierre and the cabin behind him. He slumped down on the doorstep at Simon's place and did not feel the bitter cold. He saw Pierre enter the cabin, and then he watched the gray figures in the distant cemetery as they moved slowly about, piling the last of the frozen clods upon the burdens they had carried through the dawn a few minutes before. And Mona was down with that same sickness—which meant death!
In his torment he picked and twisted at his clothes until his thin fingers were blue with the cold. Pierre came out again and put up the red cloth, and then he went to intercept the three men who were on their way from the cemetery to their quarters in the barn. Father Albanel and Simon McQuarrie returned with Pierre and entered the cabin where Mona was sick. In a few minutes Simon came out and seeing Peter huddled on the doorstep, approached as near to him as he dared. He asked the same questions, and gave the same warnings, and assured Peter that Mona was only slightly ill, and that she would get over it very quickly. But there was in his face the same look that had been in Pierre's, and Peter knew he was lying.
"She is going to die," his heart kept crying, and he dragged himself into the cabin and flung himself upon Simon's bed, and when Joe Gourdon came in he was crying, his head buried in his arms. With his beloved Marie Antoinette keeping guard in Jeremie Poulin's house of death, Joe was making a courageous fight. "Tobina Poulin is past all danger, and if things go well Aunt Marie Antoinette will come home in a few days, and then you can come to us," he comforted Peter. "Meanwhile I'm going to stay with you."
But Joe's cheerfulness was mostly forced. News came early in the day that Adette Clamart was very close to death, and that Jame and Father Albanel were constantly at her bedside.
That night sheer exhaustion brought sleep to Peter. He was awakened by a pounding at the door. Joe's voice called out below and another answered it from outside. It was Jame Clamart, going from cabin to cabin in a madness of joy, telling the people of Five Fingers that the crisis was over and Adette would live.
Peter could hear the running crunch of Jame's boots in the hard snow as he hurried on to the next neighbor and for a long time after that he lay awake in the cold darkness of his room, thinking of Mona. Fear of death had not gripped him so terribly before. In the tragedy of others he had felt shock; its suddenness and horror had stunned him and filled him with dread, but the physical grief of it had not touched him deeply until now. He was sick, but the sickness was in his heart, asif something had been cut out of it, leaving in its place an emptiness which made breath come to his lips in smothered sobs. And that something which had been taken away from him was Mona.
When he closed his eyes he could see her clearly on her white bed, her long hair streaming about the pillow, her face pinched and thin, and all the time she was wonderingwhy he did not come. She was going to die; he could think of nothing but that, and after a little one thing persisted in traveling through his brain so frequently and so terribly that he called aloud for Joe. The maddening picture was that of Father Albanel and Simon and Jeremie Poulin marching through the gray dawn to the burial plot with the bodies of Félipe and Dominique Beauvais.
Joe came up, and for the rest of that night Peter lay in the shelter of his arm and fell asleep again.
The next day came with good omen. A bright sun rose over the forests, clearer and warmer than it had been for many weeks. Herman Vogelaar, whose laughter had gone with the death of his daughter, Geertruda, came at breakfast time with the word that Adette was entirely out of her fever, and that Poleon Dufresne's wife and three children were much better than yesterday. Father Albanel, he said, had spent the last half of the night with Mona. Mona was very sick. She was worse than Adette had been, or even Geertruda, in the same length of time. He was afraid——But Joe gave him such a fierce scowl he did not finish.Peter saw the scowl and the nervous twisting of Herman's fingers at the lapels of his coat as he tried to think of something with which to cover his blunder. He wanted to ask Herman to speak what had been on his lips, but instead he put on his coat and cap and heavy mittens and went out into the day, hoping that somewhere he would see Father Albanel.
As if his hope were a prayer quickly answered, Father Albanel came from the Gourdon cabin. The little missioner advanced, keeping the wind well in his face, and when he was fifty paces from Peter he stopped and called to the boy to stand where he was. Peter tried to speak bravely when he asked if Mona was going to die.
"She is very sick," said the missioner. "We must pray for her, and believe with all our might that she is going to get well. I think God will let her live."
"I promised I'd come if she was sick. I got to keep my word. I'm not afraid."
Father Albanel shook his head.
"It is impossible, Peter. There are too many of us down now."
"I won't get sick," said Peter doggedly.
Father Albanel spoke sharply. "Keep to your cabin, my boy, and be as brave as Jame Clamart has been. If Mona grows worse, I will tell you."
Each morning after this he brought news of Mona to Peter. For a week there seemed to be no change. On the eighth day she was worse; on the tenth Pierre andJosette and Father Albanel were fighting desperately to save her life.
The tenth night came. It was past midnight when Peter crept softly to his window and opened it. With as little sound as he could make he drew himself through and dropped to the ground. He ran away quickly, the brilliance of the stars sending his shadow along with him. He did not stop until he reached the Gourdon cabin, and there he hugged closely against the log wall, his heart beating wildly as he waited. Above him a light glowed feebly against the curtain in Mona's room. He wanted to call to her; he puckered his lips and almost gave the whistling signal which she knew. Then he heard a sound, a movement of some kind, and stealthily he approached a lower window. He could see Josette very clearly. She was seated in a chair with her face bowed in her hands, and Pierre was standing at her side, gently stroking her hair. Father Albanel was behind them, his face white and torn with grief. Then Peter saw that Josette was crying.
A terrible fear gripped him as he drew away from the window. What he had seen could mean only one thing. Mona—was gone. He looked up at the dim light above him again, and in that moment his soul cried out against all those who had kept him away from her. He went to the kitchen door, opened it, and entered. This time he would scream and fight if they tried to keep him back. But no one heard him.Father Albanel's voice came to him faintly. He was praying.
Peter reached the stair and went up quietly. The door of Mona's room was open. A lamp, turned low, was burning on the table.
He approached the bed, scarcely knowing that he was moving toward it. His heart was crushed, his world crumbled and gone, for Mona must be dead or they would not leave her like this, and Josette would not be crying down below. Even his father could not have helped him now. Nothing could help him, with Monagone. He stumbled to his knees beside her and his cold fingers twined themselves about the soft braid of hair that fell over the side of her bed.
A stifled, despairing sob broke from him then as he stared at the thin face that lay so still and lifeless in the pale light of the room. He had a great desire to touch it but a moment of dread made him hesitate. Then his hand crept slowly over the coverlet until it rested against Mona's cheek, and the sobbing in his throat was choked back, for the flesh he touched was hot. His heart thumped until the sound of it seemed to fill the room. Mona's eyes were opening! They were looking at him! And then——
Two thin, white arms reached up and encircled Peter's neck, and very faintly he heard his name whispered. He pressed his face down close to Mona's.
"I'd have come sooner," he apologized, "but they wouldn't let me in!"
And somehow, in that great moment of their lives Peter's lips touched Mona's, and as the girl's flagging spirit came at last in triumph back from the edge of death Father Albanel entered the room; and when he saw what had happened he spoke no word, but in silence made the sign of the cross upon his breast and stood with his gray head bowed in voiceless prayer.
Itwas many minutes before Peter looked up and saw Father Albanel standing at his side. The little missioner made no movement except to place a hand gently on the boy's head. Mona's eyes were wide open and in them was a light of almost unearthly happiness as she looked at Peter. In the pale lamp-glow it seemed as though death had already possessed her, except for those great, shining eyes out of which Father Albanel saw all fever had gone.
In a voice that was low and choking he said, "You must come away now, Peter—for a little while."
Mona's hands rose in weak protest to Peter's shoulders, and he bent to meet them, pressing his face down again without shame or embarrassment so that her soft cheek lay close against his own.
Joy and gentleness fought with a gathering fear in Father Albanel's face, and a little at a time, but firmly, he drew Peter away, while between the words he was speaking he breathed a prayer to Sainte Anne and the Mother Mary asking that the boy might be spared the curse of the deadly malady with which he had come in contact.
At the door Peter turned, and Mona's eyes were sostrangely and darkly beautiful that he reached back his arms to her with a little cry. "I'll come again, Mona! I will! I'll comesoon!"
They went down into the room where he had seen Josette and Pierre, with his hand held tightly in the little missioner's. He had never seen a face more terribly white than Josette's, and Pierre was like a haggard old man. He looked up at Father Albanel. The missioner's face was streaming with tears, and through the tears he was smiling. Then he began to speak. He told how Peter had stolen into the house and had gone to Mona.
"God sent him," he said. "He has done more than all the physicians and medicines in the world could have done, for he has brought Mona back from the very gates of death.She will live!"
The last three words drowned all others for Peter. His breath came in little jerks. Then he found himself crying—in Josette's arms.
Josette pressed Peter to her and covered his pale, cold face with kisses. Her great eyes seemed to drown him with their nearness, and then she too was sobbing, with his face hugged close to hers. It all passed in a very few moments, it seemed to Peter, and Josette went with Father Albanel to Mona's room. She came back in a little while. Her eyes were shining and the whiteness was gone from her face.
"It is true—God has been good to us again," she said, looking into Pierre's wildly questioning eyes.
"The fever is broken. Her skin is soft and moist. And—she—wants Peter!"
Josette and Pierre understood the look that came into Father Albanel's face. They waited for him to speak.
"Please let me go," begged Peter. "I won't make a noise. I'll sit quiet."
Father Albanel swallowed a lump in his throat.
"And mebby—if I ask her—she'll go to sleep," urged Peter.
The missioner nodded his gray head. "That's it," he said, looking first at Pierre and then at Josette. "I think if Peter were there, she would sleep. The boy has already been exposed. It cannot be worse. It is God's will. Let him go and sit beside her."
A joyous thrill went through Peter. Father Albanel turned to him and put his hands on the boy's shoulders.
"You must tell her you can stay only if she will try very hard to go to sleep. After that you mustn't talk to her. And just as soon as she is asleep you must slip away quietly and come back to us here."
"I promise," said Peter.
Josette helped him off with his coat. Then she kissed him, and Peter went softly up the stair.
Though he came with scarcely more sound than a shadow to her door Mona heard him. Her eyes were watching for him, so big and shining in her thin whiteface that to Peter she seemed all eyes. He did not trouble with a stool or chair but knelt beside her bed. Mona's hands went up to his face and their gentle touch drew him down until she kissed him on the lips. There was no hesitation in her act. It was as if she had always kissed him.
"Please kiss me, Peter," she said.
He kissed her.
"I was dreaming that over and over," she smiled at him faintly, "and you didn't come. Now it's true. And—I'm—so—glad——"
"You mustn't talk," he warned, remembering his duty. "They said ifyousaid anything after I told you this I'd have to go downstairs. They want you to sleep.
"An' I want you tosleep," he added courageously. "You mustn't say another word—not one!"
Mona started to speak, then put a finger to her lips, and her eyes glowed at Peter until he felt creeping through him an overwhelming desire to kiss her again. She tucked her hand in his, and he settled down, sitting on the floor. Mona closed her eyes and gave a deep sigh. Her fingers squeezed Peter's, and Peter's fingers squeezed back.
Half an hour later Josette tiptoed up the stair. Quietly she came through the dim light to the bedside. Mona was asleep. She was breathing evenly for the first time in many days. Peter had leaned over so that his cheek was resting on the thick, soft braid of herhair. Mona's hand was still clasped in his. And he too was asleep.
Josette drew back as quietly as she had entered and returned to Pierre and Father Albanel.
Hours later Peter awoke. He thought he was dreaming at first. Then he found his fingers buried in Mona's braid, and saw her pale face against the pillow. Everything returned to him in a moment, and he moved his cramped legs an inch at a time, and very quietly got on his feet. Mona was asleep. He bent over and listened to her breathing. Then he looked at the little clock that was ticking on a shelf above her table. It was four o'clock. Almost time for the gloomy dawn to come. He must have slept a long time! And Mona had slept too. His heart beat joyously as he backed slowly toward the door, careful not to make the slightest sound.
In the room below he found Father Albanel sitting with his gray head bowed over a book which had fallen into his lap. But Josette heard him, still as he had been, and came out of her room. She was in a white nightgown with soft arms bare to her elbows and her hair in two long, loosely plaited braids.
To Peter she was more than ever like an angel.
"Sh-h-h-h!" she whispered, putting a finger to her lips. "Everyone is asleep, Peter—except you and me!"
She took his hand and led him into the spare room which had once been Joe's, and sat down with him for a few moments on the edge of the bed.
"You are going to stay with us for a while," she said in a voice so low and sweet that it was like music to Peter. "Will you like that?"
He shook his head affirmatively. "I wanted to come all the time. I promised Mona I would—if she was ever sick."
Josette drew his head gently against her breast. He could hear her heart beating.
"I am Mona's mother. After this—how would you like me to beyourmother?" she asked softly.
"I—I'd like it. But I gotta live with Simon. Dad told me to—until he comes back."
The arm about his shoulders tightened a little.
"Yes, you must live with Simon. I wouldn't take you from him. But I'm going to be your mother, Peter—just the same. From now on, all the time, you belong to me just as Mona does."
"I guess that's why Mona likes me—because I haven't got a mother," he tried to explain. "But my dad's coming back. He'll love you too. Nobody can help loving you, can they?"
"I don't know, Peter."
"Simon says they can't. My mother was just like you. I've dreamed of her lots of times."
"Does she look like me—in your dreams, Peter?"
"Last time I thought shewasyou. We were out in the woods picking flowers, an' Mona was there. Then she faded away. She always fades away, just sort of melts until you can't see her—my mother, Imean." Suddenly he asked, "Did you ever see Mona's mother?"
"Yes, Peter."
"Was she pretty?"
"All mothers are pretty, Peter."
Peter pondered for a moment. "I guess mebby they are," he said, and then added a little dubiously, "except now and then. I'll bet Aleck Curry's mother isn't pretty!"
"To Aleck—she is beautiful," whispered Josette, and drew herself gently away from him. "You must undress and go to bed now, Peter. Good night!"
For a while after she was gone he sat on the edge of his bed wondering what she had meant in saying that thing about Aleck Curry and his mother. A beast like Aleckcouldn'thave a pretty mother. But her words troubled him even after he was undressed and in bed. If by any chance Aleckdidhave a pretty mother—why—it wasn't right for Mona and him to hate Aleck as they did, that was all!
He didn't sleep much between then and morning, and when he came out of his room, just as the first cold light of the winter sun was falling in the clearing, happier faces greeted him. Mona was better. In the reaction of joy that had swept over the household there was once more laughter in the kitchen. Josette went up the stair singing. And when at last she called down for Peter he found Mona bolstered up in her bed, andJosette was brushing her hair, which streamed about her in long, beautiful cascades of silken softness. Mona's eyes and face were different this morning. She was more like the Mona he had known, only thinner and whiter, and she smiled at him when he came through the door.
With Josette so near, Peter was a little self-conscious and clumsy in his greeting. But Mona held out her arms, just as she had done last night, and pulled him down to her, and kissed him.
From that day the great fact in the lives of the two children was accepted in Five Fingers. Mona and Peter belonged to each other. And so sure was Father Albanel of God's intention in the matter that he felt no worry about Peter, in spite of the fact that the boy had come in fearfully close contact with the deadly malady.
"He will not catch the sickness," he said confidently. "God didn't send him for that."
And as day after day passed, and only good news continued to come from the Gourdon cabin, those who had at first doubted also came to believe; for Mona's coming back from death, and Peter's escaping the plague, were miracles like those which happened at the precious shrine of Ste. Anne de Beaupré, and only God could have brought them about.
In two weeks Mona was out of bed and on her feet. And from that day, Peter noticed, she did not hold out her arms to him again, or ask him to kiss her. Buther eyes were always soft and full of happiness when he was near her.
The last of winter passed, and spring came. May followed April, and flowers sprang up in the clearing. The birds returned, work began in the fields, and in the sweetness and promise of life Five Fingers rose out of the grimness of its tragedy.
One warm day when they had gone to the big beaver pond, just a week after Mona's fourteenth birthday, Peter said something that he wasthinking, and didn't mean to say at all. He had been thinking it off and on for a long time, and the words slipped out of him before he knew it.
"You never ask me to kiss you any more," he said.
"Girls don't ask boys to kiss them—not unless they're sick," replied Mona, looking at him with eyes so bright that Peter felt every drop of blood in his body rushing to his face.
"Then I—I sometimes wish you was sick again!" blundered Peter.
"Peter!"
"Yes, I do," he affirmed stubbornly.
Mona's cheeks were flushing until they were the color of a rose.
Suddenly her eyes flashed and she stamped a little foot.
"You don't want to kiss meor you'd ask for it!" she cried. "I always had to make you!"
It was a new thought for Peter to ponder upon.Half an hour later, when they were almost home, he came to a decision.
"I do!" he exclaimed suddenly.
"You dowhat?" asked Mona, who had been livelier than ever in hunting for flowers.
"You know."
"I don't."
"You can guess."
"I'm not going to guess."
"I'll give you three chances," offered Peter.
"I don't want them."
Peter was desperate. "You didn't mean what you said, then?"
"What did I say?"
"You said I didn't want to kiss you or I'd ask for it."
"Well—you haven't asked."
"I did. I just asked."
Mona's lovely eyes opened wide.
"Did you, Peter? I didn't hear it. Please ask again!"
Peter gulped.
"Will you?" he asked.
"Will Iwhat?"
"Let me kiss you?"
For what seemed at least an hour to Peter she stood looking at him.
"If I do—will you promise never to kiss any other girl?"
"I promise."
"And never let any other girl kiss you? I mean Adette Clamart, too!"
"Sure I do."
"As long as you live?"
"As long as I live."
With a little gesture of gladness and satisfaction Mona Guyon held up the prettiest mouth in all Five Fingers, and Peter kissed it.