All that spring and summer Jan spent in the thick caribou swamps and low ridge-mountains along the Barrens. It was two months before he appeared at the post again, and then he remained only long enough to patch himself up and secure fresh supplies.
Mélisse had suffered quietly during these two months, a grief and loneliness filling her heart which none knew but herself. Even from Iowaka she kept her unhappiness a secret; and yet when the gloom had settled heaviest upon her, she was still buoyed up by a persistent hope. Until Jan's last visit to Lac Bain this hope never quite went out.
The first evening after his arrival from the swamps to the west, he came to the cabin. His beard had grown again. His hair was long and shaggy, and fell in shining dishevelment upon his shoulders. The sensitive beauty of his great eyes, once responsive to every passing humor in Mélisse, flashing fun at her laughter, glowing softly in their devotion, was gone. His face was filled with the age-old silence of the forest man. Firmly and yet gently, it repelled whatever of the old things she might have said and done, holding her away from him as if by power of a strong hand.
This time Mélisse knew that there was left not even the last comforting spark of hope within her bosom. Jan had gone out of her life for ever, leaving to her, as a haunting ghost of what they two had once been to each other, the old violin on the cabin wall.
After he went away again, the violin became more and more to her what it had once been to him. She played it as he had played it, sobbing her loneliness and her heart-break through its strings, in lone hours clasping it to her breast and speaking to it as Jan had talked to it in years gone by.
"If you could only tell me—if you only could!" she whispered to it one day, when the autumn was drawing near. "If you could tell me about him, and what I might do—dear old violin!"
Once during the autumn Jan came in for supplies and traps, and his dogs and sledge. He was planning to spend the winter two hundred miles to the west, in the country of the Athabasca. He was at Lac Bain for a week, and during this time a mail-runner came in from Fort Churchill.
The runner brought a new experience into the life of Mélisse—her first letter. It was from young Dixon—twenty or more closely written pages of it, in which he informed her that he was going to spend a part of the approaching winter at Lac Bain.
She was reading the last page when Jan came into the cabin. Her cheeks were slightly flushed by this new excitement, which was reflected in her eyes as she looked at Jan.
"A letter!" she cried, holding out her two hands filled with the pages."A letter—to me, Jan, all the way from Fort Churchill!"
"Who in the world—" he began, smiling at her; and stopped.
"It's from Mr. Dixon," she said, the flush deepening in her cheeks."He's going to spend part of the winter with us."
"I'm glad of that, Mélisse," said Jan quietly. "I like him, and would like to know him better. I hope he will bring you some more books—and strings." He glanced at the old violin. "Do you play much?"
"A great deal," she replied. "Won't you play for me, Jan?"
"My hands are too rough; and besides, I've forgotten all that I ever knew."
"Even the things you played when I was a baby?"
"I think I have, Mélisse. But you must never forget them."
"I shall remember them—always," she answered softly. "Some day it may be that I will teach them to you again."
He did not see her again until six months later, when he came in to the caribou roast, with his furs. Then he learned that another letter had come to Mélisse, and that Dixon had gone to London instead of coming to Lac Bain.
The day after the carnival he went back into the country of the Athabasca. Spring did not see him at Lac Bain. Early summer brought no news of him. In the floods, Jean went by the water-way to the Athabasca, and found Thoreau's cabin abandoned. There had not been life in it for a long time. The Indians said that since the melting snows they had not seen Jan. A half-breed whom Jean met at Fond du Lac said that he had found the bones of a white man on the Beaver, with a Hudson's Bay gun and a horn-handled knife beside them.
Jean came back to Lac Bain heavy at heart.
"There is no doubt but that he is dead," he told Iowaka. "I do not believe that it will hurt very much if you tell Mélisse."
One day early in September a lone figure came in to the post at noon, when the company people were at dinner. He carried a pack, and six dogs trailed at his heels. It was Jan Thoreau.
"I have been down to civilization," was his explanation. "I have returned to spend this winter at Lac Bain."
On the first snow came young Dixon from Fort Churchill. Jean de Gravois met him on the trail near Ledoq's. When the Englishman recognized the little Frenchman he leaped from his sledge and advanced with outstretched hand, his face lighting up with pleasure.
"Bless me, if it isn't my old friend, Jean!" he cried. "I was just thinking of you, Gravois, and how you trimmed me to a finish two winters ago. I've learned a lot about you people up here in the snows since then, and I'll never do anything like that again." He laughed into Jean's face as they shook hands, and his voice was filled with unbounded sincerity. "How is Mrs. Gravois, and the little Gravois—and Mélisse?" he added, before Jean had spoken.
"All well, M'seur Dixon," replied Jean. "Only the little Gravois have almost grown into a man and woman."
An hour or so later he said to Iowaka:
"I can't help liking this man Dixon, and yet I don't want to. Why is it, do you suppose?"
"Is it because you are afraid that Mélisse will like him?" asked his wife, smiling over her shoulder.
"Blessed saints, I believe that it is!" said Jean frankly. "I hate foreigners—and Mélisse belongs to Jan."
"She did, once, but that was a long time ago, Jean."
"It may be, and yet I doubt it, ma bien aimée. If Jan would tell her—"
"A woman will not wait always," interrupted Iowaka softly. "Jan Thoreau has waited too long!"
A week later, as they stood together in front of their door, they saw Dixon and Mélisse walking slowly in the edge of the forest. The woman laughed into Jean's face.
"Did I not say that Jan had waited too long?"
Jean's face was black with disapprobation.
"Then you would have taken up with some foreigner if I had remained in the Athabasca country another year or two?" he demanded questioningly.
"Very likely," retorted Iowaka mischievously, running into the cabin.
"The devil!" said Jean sourly, stalking in the direction of the store.
He was angered at the coolness with which Jan accepted the situation.
"This Dixon is with Mélisse afternoon and evening, and they walk together every day in the bush," he said to him. "Soon there will be a wedding at Lac Bain!"
"Mélisse deserves a good man," replied Jan, unmoved. "I like Dixon."
Deep down in his soul he knew that each day was bringing the end of it all much nearer for him. He did not tell Mélisse that he had returned to Lac Bain to be near her once more, nor did he confide in Jean. He had anticipated that this winter at the post would be filled with a certain painful pleasure for him—but he had not anticipated Dixon. Day after day he saw Mélisse and the Englishman together, and while they awakened in him none of the fiery jealousy which might have rankled in the bosom of Jean de Gravois, the knowledge that the girl was at last passing from him for ever added a deeper grief to that which was already eating at his heart.
Dixon made no effort to conceal his feelings. He loved Mélisse. Frankly he told this to Jean one day, when they were on the Churchill trail. In his honest way he said things which broke down the last of Jean's hereditary prejudices, and compelled him to admit that this was a different sort of foreigner than he had ever known before.
"Diable, I like him," he said to himself; "and yet I would rather see him in the blessed hereafter than have him take Mélisse from Jan!"
The big snow decided.
It came early in December. Dixon had set out alone for Ledoq's early in the morning. By noon the sky was a leaden black, and a little later one could not see a dozen paces ahead of him for the snow. The Englishman did not return that day. The next day he was still gone, and Gravois drove along the top of the mountain ridge until he came to the Frenchman's, where he found that Dixon had started for Lac Bain the preceding afternoon. He brought word back to the post. Then he went to Mélisse.
"It is as good as death to go out in search of him," he said. "We can no longer use the dogs. Snowshoes will sink like leaden bullets by morning, and to go ten miles from the post means that there will be bones to be picked by the foxes when the crust comes!"
It was dark when Jan came into the cabin. Mélisse started to her feet with a little cry when he entered, covered white with the snow. A light pack was strapped to his back, and he carried his rifle in his hand.
"I am going to hunt for him," he said softly. "If he is alive, I will bring him back to you."
She came to him slowly, and the beating of Jan's heart sounded to him like the distant thrumming of partridge-wings. Ah, would he ever forget that look? The old glory was in her eyes, her arms were reaching out, her lips parted. Jan knew how the Great Spirit had once appeared to Mukee, and how a white mist, like a snow-veil, had come between the half-breed's eyes and the wondrous Thing he beheld. That same veil drifted between Jan and the girl. As in a vision, he saw her face so near to him that he felt the touch of her sweet breath, and he knew that one of his rough hands was clasped in both of her own, and that after a moment it was crushed tightly against her bosom.
"Jan, my hero—"
He struggled back, almost sobbing, as he plunged out into the night again. He heard her voice crying after him, but the wild wailing of the spruce, and the storm in his brain, drowned its words. He had seen the glorious light of love in her eyes—her love for Dixon! And he would find him! At last he, Jan Thoreau, would prove that the old love was not dead within him; he would do for Mélisse this night—to-morrow—the next day, and until he fell down to die—what he had promised to do on their sledge-ride to Ledoq's. And then—
He went to Ledoq's now, following the top of the mountain, and reached his cabin in the late dawn. The Frenchman stared at him in amazement when he learned that he was about to set out on a search for Dixon.
"You will not find him," he said slowly in French; "but if you are determined to go, I will hunt with you. It is a big chance that we will not come back."
"I don't want you to go," objected Jan. "One will do as much as two, unless we search alone. I came your way to find if it had begun to snow before Dixon left."
"An hour after he had gone, you could not see your hand before your face," replied Ledoq, preparing his pack. "There is no doubt but that he circled out over Lac Bain. We will go that far together, and then search alone."
They went back over the mountain, and stopped when instinct told them that they were opposite the spruce forests of the lake. There they separated, Jan going as nearly as he could guess into the northwest, Ledoq trailing slowly and hopelessly into the south.
It was no great sacrifice for Jan, this struggle with the big snows for the happiness of Mélisse. What it was to Ledoq no man ever guessed or knew, for it was not until the late spring snows had gone that the people at Lac Bain found what the foxes and the wolves had left of him, far to the south.
Fearlessly Jan plunged into the white world of the lake. There was neither rock nor tree to guide him, for everywhere was the heavy ghost-raiment of the Indian god. The balsams were bending under it, the spruces were breaking into hunchback forms, the whole world was twisted in noiseless torture under its increasing weight. Out through the still terror of it all Jan's voice went in wild, echoing shouts. Now and then he fired his rifle, and always he listened long and intently. The echoes came back to him, laughing, taunting, and then each time fell the mirthless silence of the storm.
Day came, only a little lighter than the night. He crossed the lake, his snow-shoes sinking ankle-deep at every step, and once each half-hour he fired a single shot from his rifle. He heard shots to the south, and knew that it was Ledoq; each report coming to him more faintly than the last, until they had died away entirely.
Across the lake he struck the forest again, and his shouts echoed in futile inquiry in its weird depths. About him there was no sign of life, no sound except the faint fluttering of falling snow. Under five feet of this snow the four-footed creatures of the wilderness were snugly buried; close against the trunks of the spruces, sheltered within their tent-like coverings, the birds waited like lifeless things for the breaking of the storm.
At noon Jan stopped and ate his lunch. Then he went on, carrying his rifle always upon his right shoulder, so that the steps of his right leg would be shortened, and he would travel in a circle, as he believed Dixon had done.
The storm thickened with the falling of night, and he burrowed himself a great hole in the soft snow and filled it with balsam boughs for a bed. When he awakened, hours later, he stood up, and thrust out his head, and found himself buried to the arm-pits. With the aid of his broad snow-shoes he drew himself out, until he stood knee-deep in the surface.
He lifted his pack. As he swung it before him, one arm thrust through a strap, he gave a startled cry. Half of one side of the pack was eaten away! He thrust his hands through the breach, and a moan of despair sobbed on his lips when he found that his food was gone. A thin trickle of flour ran through his fingers upon the snow. He pulled out a gnawed pound of bacon, a little tea—and that was all.
Frantically he ripped the rent wider in his search, and when he stood up, his wild face staring into the chaos about him, he held only the bit of bacon in his hand. In it were the imprints of tiny teeth—sharp little razor-edged teeth that told him what had happened. While he had slept a mink had robbed him of his food!
With one of his shoes he began digging furiously in the snow. He tore his balsam bed to pieces. Somewhere—somewhere not very far away—the little animal must have cached its theft. He dug down until he came to the frozen earth. For an hour he worked and found nothing.
Then he stopped. Over a small fire he melted snow for tea and broiled a slice of the bacon, which he ate with the few biscuit crumbs he found in the pack. Every particle of flour that he could find he scraped up with his knife and put into one of the deep pockets of his caribou coat. After that he set cut in the direction in which he thought he would find Lac Bain.
Still he shouted for Dixon, and fired an occasional shot from his rifle. By noon he should have struck the lake. Noon came and passed; the gloom of a second night fell upon him. He built himself a fire, and ate two-thirds of what remained of the bacon. The handful of flour in his pocket he did not disturb.
It was still night when he broke his rest and struggled on. His first fears were gone. In place of them, there filled him now a grim sort of pleasure. A second time he was battling with death for Mélisse. And this, after all, was not a very hard fight for him. He had feared death in the red plague, but he did not fear the thought of this death that threatened him in the big snows. It thrilled him, instead, with a strange sort of exhilaration. If he died, it would be for Mélisse, and for all time she would remember him for what he had done.
When he ate the last bit of his bacon, he made up his mind what he would do when the end came. In the stock of his rifle he would scratch a few last words to Mélisse. He even arranged the words in his brain—four of them—"Mélisse, I love you." He repeated them to himself as he staggered on, and that night, beside the fire he built, he began by carving her name.
"To-morrow," he said softly, "I will do the rest."
He was growing very hungry, but he did not touch the flour. For six hours he slept, and then drank his fill of hot tea.
"We will travel until day, Jan Thoreau," he informed himself, "and then, if nothing turns up, we will build our last camp, and eat the flour. It will be the last of us, for there will be no meat above this snow for days."
His snow-shoes were an impediment now, and he left them behind, along with one of his two blankets, which had grown to be like lead upon his shoulders. He counted his cartridges—ten of them. One of these he fired into the air.
Was that an echo he heard?
A sudden thrill shot through him. He strained his ears to catch a repetition of the sound. In a moment it came again—clearly no echo this time.
"Ledoq!" he cried aloud.
He fired again.
Back to him came the distant, splitting crack of a rifle. He forced his way toward it. After a little he heard the signal again, much nearer than before, and he fired in response. A few hundred yards farther on he came to a low mountain ridge, and lifted his voice in a loud shout. A shot came from just over the mountain.
Waist deep in the light snow he began the ascent, dragging himself up by the tops of the slender saplings, stopping every few yards to half-stretch himself out in the soft mass through which he was struggling, panting with exhaustion. He shouted when he gained the top of the ridge. Up through the white blur of snow on the other side there came to him faintly a shout; yet, in spite of its faintness, Jan knew that it was very near.
"Something has happened to Ledoq," he told himself, "but he surely has food, and we can live it out until the storm is over."
It was easier going down the ridge, and he went quickly in the direction from which the voice had come, until a mass of huge boulders loomed up before him. There was a faint odor of smoke in the air, and he followed it in among the rocks, where it grew stronger.
"Ho, Ledoq!" he shouted.
A voice replied a dozen yards away. Slowly, as he advanced, he made out the dim shadow of life in the white gloom—a bit of smoke climbing weakly in the storm, the black opening of a brush shelter—and then, between the opening and the spiral of smoke, a living thing that came creeping toward him on all fours, like an animal.
He plunged toward it, and the shadow staggered upward, and would have fallen had it not been for the support of the deep snow. Another step, and a sharp cry fell from Jan's lips. It was not Ledoq, but Dixon, who stood there with white, starved face and staring eyes in the snow gloom!
"My God, I am starving—and dying for a drink of water!" gasped the Englishman chokingly, thrusting out his arms. "Thoreau, God be praised—"
He staggered, and fell in the snow. Jan dragged him back to the shelter.
"I will have water for you—and something to eat—very soon," he said.
His voice sounded unreal. There was a mistiness before his eyes which was not caused by the storm, a twisting of strange shadows that bothered his vision, and made him sway dizzily when he threw off his pack to stir the fire. He suspended his two small pails over the embers, which he coaxed into a blaze. Both he filled with snow; into one he emptied the handful of flour that he had carried in his pocket—into the other he put tea. Fifteen minutes later he carried them to the Englishman.
Dixon sat up, a glazed passion filling his eyes. He drank the hot tea greedily, and as greedily ate the boiled flour-pudding. Jan watched him hungrily until the last crumb of it was gone. He refilled the pails with snow, added more tea, and then rejoined the Englishman. New life was already shining in Dixon's eyes.
"Not a moment too soon, Thoreau," he said thankfully, reaching over to grip the other's hand.
"Another night and—" Suddenly he stopped. "Great Heaven, what is the matter?"
He noticed for the first time the pinched torture in his companion's face. Jan's head dropped weakly upon his breast. His hands were icy cold.
"Nothing," he murmured drowsily, "only—I'm starving, too, Dixon!" He recovered himself with an effort, and smiled into Dixon's startled face. "There is nothing to eat," he continued, as he saw the other direct his gaze toward the pack. "I gave you the last of the flour. There is nothing—but salt and tea." He rolled over upon the balsam boughs with a restful sigh. "Let me sleep!"
Dixon went to the pack. One by one, in his search for food, he took out the few articles that it contained. After that he drank more tea, crawled back into the balsam shelter, and lay down beside Jan. It was broad day when he awoke, and he called hoarsely to his companion when he saw that the snow had ceased falling.
Jan did not stir. For a moment Dixon leaned over to listen to his breathing, and then dragged himself slowly and painfully out into the day. The fire was out. A leaden blackness still filled the sky; deep, silent gloom hung in the wake of the storm.
Suddenly there came to Dixon's ears a sound. It was a sound that would have been unheard in the gentle whispering of a wind, in the swaying of the spruce-tops; but in this silence it fell upon the starving man's hearing with a distinctness that drew his muscles rigid and set his eyes staring about him in wild search. Just beyond the hanging pails a moose-bird hopped out upon the snow. It chirped hungrily, its big, owl-like eyes scrutinizing Dixon. The man stared back, fearing to move. Slowly he forced his right foot through the snow to the rear of his left, and as cautiously brought his left behind his right, working himself backward step by step until he reached the shelter. Just inside was his rifle. He drew it out and sank upon his knees in the snow to aim. At the report of the rifle, Jan stirred but did not open his eyes; he made no movement when Dixon called out in shrill joy that he had killed meat. He heard, he strove to arouse himself, but something more powerful than his own will seemed pulling him down into oblivion. It seemed an eternity before he was conscious of a voice again. He felt himself lifted, and opened his eyes with his head resting against the Englishman's shoulder.
"Drink this, Thoreau," he heard.
He drank, and knew that it was not tea that ran down his throat.
"Whisky-jack soup," he heard again. "How is it?"
He became wide-awake. Dixon was offering him a dozen small bits of meat on a tin plate, and he ate without questioning. Suddenly, when there were only two or three of the smallest scraps left, he stopped.
"Mon Dieu, it was whisky-jack!" he cried. "I have eaten it all!"
The young Englishman's white face grinned at him.
"I've got the flour inside of me, Thoreau—you've got the moose-bird.Isn't that fair?"
The plate dropped between them. Over it their hands met in a great, clutching grip, and up from Jan's heart there welled words which almost burst from his lips in voice, words which rang in his brain, and which were an unspoken prayer—"Mélisse, I thank the great God that it is this man whom you love!" But it was in silence that he staggered to his feet and went out into the gloom.
"This may be only a lull in the storm," he said. "We must lose no time.How long did you travel before you made this camp?"
"About ten hours," said Dixon. "I made due west by compass until I knew that I had passed Lac Bain, and then struck north."
"Ah, you have the compass," cried Jan, his eyes lighting up. "M'seur Dixon, we are very near to the post if you camped so soon! Tell me which is north."
"That is north."
"Then we go south—south and east. If you traveled ten hours, first west and then north, we are northwest of Lac Bain."
Jan spoke no more, but got his rifle from the shelter and put only the tea and two pails in his pack; leaving the remaining blanket upon the snow. The Englishman followed close behind him, bending weakly under the weight of his gun. Tediously they struggled to the top of the ridge, and as Jan stopped to look through the gray day about him, Dixon sank down into the snow. When the other turned toward him he grinned up feebly into his face.
"Bushed," he gasped. "Don't believe I can make it through this snow,Thoreau."
There was no fear in his eyes; there was even a cheerful ring in his voice.
A sudden glow leaped into Jan's face.
"I know this ridge," he exclaimed. "It runs within a mile of Lac Bain.You'd better leave your rifle behind."
Dixon made an effort to rise and Jan helped him. They went on slowly, resting every few hundred yards, and each time that he rose from these periods of rest, Dixon's face was twisted with pain.
"It's the flour and water anchored amidships," he smiled grimly."Cramps—Ugh!"
"We'll make it by supper-time," assured Jan cheerfully.
Dixon leaned heavily on his arm.
"I wish you'd go on alone," he urged. "You could send help—"
"I promised Mélisse that I would bring you back if I found you," replied Jan, his face turned away. "If the storm broke again, you would be lost."
"Tell me—tell me—" he heard Dixon pant eagerly, "did she send you to hunt for me, Thoreau?"
Something in the Englishman's voice drew his eyes to him. There was an excited flush in his starved cheeks; his eyes shone.
"Did she send you?"
Jan struggled hard to speak calmly.
"Not in words, M'seur Dixon. But I know that if I get you safely back to Lac Bain she will be very happy."
Something came in Dixon's sobbing breath which Jan did not hear. A little later he stopped and built a fire over which he melted more snow and boiled tea. The drink stimulated them, and they went on. A little later still and Jan hung his rifle in the crotch of a sapling.
"We will return for the guns in a day or so," he said.
Dixon leaned upon him more heavily now, and the distances they traveled between resting periods became shorter and shorter. Three times they stopped to build fires and cook tea. It was night when they descended from the ridge to the snow-covered ice of Lac Bain. It was past midnight when Jan dragged Dixon from the spruce forest into the opening at the post. There were no lights burning, and he went with his half-conscious burden to the company's store. He awakened Croisset, who let them in.
"Take care of Dixon," said Jan, "and don't arouse any of the people to-night. It will be time enough to tell what has happened in the morning."
Over the stove in his own room he cooked meat and coffee, and for a long time sat silent before the fire. He had brought back Dixon. In the morning Mélisse would know. First she would go to the Englishman, then—then—she would come to him!
He rose and went to the rude board table in the corner of his room.
"No, Mélisse must not come to me in the morning," he whispered to himself. "She must never again look upon Jan Thoreau."
He took pencil and paper and wrote. Page after page he crumpled in his hand and flung into the fire. At last, swiftly and despairingly, he ended with half a dozen lines. What he said came from his heart, in French:
"I have brought him back to you, my Mélisse, and pray that the good God may give you happiness. I leave you the old violin, and always when you play, it will tell you of the love of Jan Thoreau."
He folded the page and sealed it in one of the company's envelopes. Very quietly he went from his room down into the deserted store. Without striking a light he found a new pack, a few articles of food, and ammunition. The envelope, addressed to Mélisse, he left where Croisset or the factor would find it in the morning. His dogs were housed in a shack behind the store, and he called out their names softly and warningly as he went among them. As stealthily as their master they trailed behind him to the edge of the forest, and close under the old spruce that guarded the grave Jan stopped, and silently he stretched out his arms to the little cabin.
The dogs watched him. Kazan, the one-eyed leader, glared from him into the dimness of the night, whining softly. A low, mourning wind swept through the spruce tops, and from Jan's throat there burst sobbingly words which he had heard beside this same grave more than seventeen years before, when Williams' choking voice had risen in a last prayer for the woman.
"May the great God care for Mélisse!"
He turned into the trail upon which Jean de Gravois had fought the Englishman, led his dogs and sledge in a twisting path through the caribou swamp, and stood at last beside the lob-stick tree that leaned out over the edge of the white barrens. With his knife he dug out the papers which he had concealed in that whisky-jack hole.
It was near dawn when he recovered the rifle which he had abandoned on the mountain top. A little later it began to snow. He was glad, for it would conceal his trail.
For thirteen days he forced his dogs through the deep snows into the south. On the fourteenth they came to Le Pas, which is the edge of civilization. It was night when he came out of the forest, so that he could see the faint glow of lights beyond the Saskatchewan.
For a few moments, before crossing, he stopped his tired dogs and turned his face back into the grim desolation of the North, where the aurora was playing feebly in the skies, and beckoning to him, and telling him that the old life of centuries and centuries ago would wait for him always at the dome of the earth.
"The good God bless you, and keep you, and care for you ever more, my Mélisse," he whispered; and he walked slowly ahead of his dogs, across the river, and into the Other World.
There was music that night in Le Pas. Jan heard it before he came to the first of the scattered lights, and the dogs pricked up their ears. Kazan, the one-eyed, whined under his breath, and the weight at Jan's heart grew heavier as the dog turned up his head to him in the starlight. It was strange music, nothing like Jan had ever heard. It was strange to Kazan, and set him whining, and he thrust his muzzle up to his master's touch inquiringly. They passed on like shadows, close to a big, lighted log building from which the music came, and with it a tumult of laughter, of shuffling and stamping feet, of coarse singing and loud voices. A door opened and a man and a woman came out. The man was cursing, and the woman was laughing at him—laughing as Jan had never heard a woman laugh before, and he held his breath as he listened to the taunting mockery in it. Others followed the first man and the first woman. Some passed quietly. A woman, escorted between two men, screamed with merriment as she flung toward his shadowy figure an object which fell with a crash against the sledge. It was a bottle. Kazan snarled. The trace-dogs slunk close to the leader's heels. With a low word Jan led them on.
Close down to the river, where the Saskatchewan swung in a half-moon to the south and west, he found a low, squat building with a light hung over the door illuminating a bit of humor in the form of a printed legend which said that it was "King Edward's Hotel." The scrub bush of the forest grew within a hundred yards of it, and in this bush Jan tied his dogs and left his sledge. It did not occur to him that now, when he had entered civilization, he had come also into the land of lock and bolt, of robbers and thieves. It was loneliness, and not suspicion, that sent him back to unleash Kazan and take him with him.
They entered the hotel, Kazan with suspicious caution. The door opened into a big room lighted by an oil lamp, turned low. The room was empty except for a solitary figure sitting in a chair, facing a wide window which looked into the north. Making no sound, that he might not disturb this other occupant, Jan also seated himself before the window. Kazan laid his wolfish head across his master's knees, his one eye upon him steadily and questioningly. Never in all his years of life had Jan felt the depth of loneliness that swept upon him now, as he looked into the North. Below him the Saskatchewan lay white and silent; beyond it he could see the dark edge of the forest, and far, far, beyond that, hovering low in the sky, the polar star. It burned faintly now, almost like a thousand other stars that he saw, and the aurora was only a fading glow.
Something rose up in Jan's throat and choked him, and he closed his eyes, with his fingers clutching Kazan's head. In spite of the battle that he had fought, his mind swept back—back through the endless silent spaces, over mountains and through forests, swift, resistless, until once more the polar star flashed in all its glory over his head, and he was at Lac Bain. He did not know that he was surrendering to hunger, exhaustion, the cumulative effects of his thirteen days' fight in the forests. He was with Mélisse again, with the old violin, with the things that they had loved. He forgot in these moments that there was another in the room; he heard no sound as the man shifted his position so that he looked steadily at him and Kazan. It was the low, heart-broken sob of grief that fell from his own lips that awakened him again to a consciousness of the present.
He jerked himself erect, and found Kazan with his fangs gleaming. The stranger had risen. He was standing close to him, leaning down, staring at him in the dim lamplight, and as Jan lifted his own eyes he knew that in the pale, eager face of the man above him there was written a grief which might have been a reflection of his own. For a full breath or two they looked, neither speaking, and the hair along Kazan's spine stood stiff. Something reached out to Jan and set his tired blood tingling. He knew that this man was not a forest man. He was not of his people. His face bore the stamp of the people to the south, of civilization. And yet something passed between them, leaped all barriers, and made them friends before they had spoken. The stranger reached down his hand, and Jan reached up his. All of the loneliness, the clinging to hope, the starving desire of two men for companionship, passed in the long grip of their hands.
"You have just come down," said the man, half questioningly. "That was your sledge—out there?"
"Yes," said Jan.
The stranger sat down in the chair next to Jan.
"From the camps?" he questioned eagerly.
"What camps, m'sieur?"
"The railroad camps, where they are putting the new line through, beyond Wekusko."
"I know of no camps," said Jan simply. "I know of no railroad, except this that comes to Le Pas. I come from Lac Bain, on the edge of the barren lands."
"You have never been down before?" asked the stranger softly. Jan wondered at the light in his eyes.
"A long time ago," he said, "for a day. I have passed all of my life—up there." Jan pointed to the north, and the other's eyes turned to where the polar star was fading low in the sky.
"And I have passed all of my life DOWN THERE," he replied, nodding his head to the south. "A year ago I came up here for—for health and happiness," he laughed nervously. "I found them both. But I'm leaving them. I'm going back to-morrow. My name is Thornton," he added, holding out his hand again. "I come from Chicago."
"My name is Thoreau—Jan Thoreau," said Jan. "I have read of Chicago in a book, and have seen pictures of it. Is it larger than the city that is called Winnipeg?"
He looked at Thornton, and Thornton turned his head a little so that the light did not shine in his face. The grip of his fingers tightened about Jan's hand.
"Yes, it is larger."
"The officers of the great company are at Winnipeg, and LeCommissionaire, are they not, m'sieur?"
"Of the Hudson's Bay Company—yes."
"And if there was business to do—important business, m'sieur, would it not be best to go to Le Commissionaire?" questioned Jan.
Thornton looked hard at the tense eagerness in Jan's face.
"There are nearer headquarters, at Prince Albert," he said.
"That is not far," exclaimed Jan, rising. "And they would do business there—important business?" He dropped his hand to Kazan's head, and half turned toward the door.
"Perhaps better than the Commissioner," replied Thornton. "It might depend—on what your business is."
To them, as each stood for a moment in silence, there came the low wailing of a dog out in the night.
"They are calling for Kazan," said Jan quietly, as though he had not read the question in Thornton's last words. "Good night, m'sieur!"
The dogs were sitting upon their haunches, waiting, when Jan and Kazan went back to them. Jan drew them farther back, where the thick spruce shut them out from the clearing, and built a fire. Over this he hung his coffee-pail and a big chunk of frozen caribou meat, and tossed frozen fish to the hungry dogs. Then he pulled down spruce boughs and spread his heavy blankets out near the fire, and waited for the coffee and meat to cook. The huskies were through when he began eating, and they lay on their bellies, close about his feet, ready to snap at the scraps which he threw them. Jan noticed, as he ate, that there was left in them none of the old, fierce, fighting spirit. They did not snap or snarl. There was no quarreling when he threw bits of meat to them, and he found himself wondering if they, too, were filled with the sickness which was eating at his own heart.
With this sickness, this deathly feeling of loneliness and heartache, there had entered into Jan now a strange sensation that was almost excitement—an eagerness to fasten the dogs in their traces, to hurry on, in spite of his exhaustion, to that place which Thornton had told him of—Prince Albert, and to free himself there, for all time, of the thing which had oppressed him since that night many years ago, when he had staggered into Lac Bain to play his violin as Cummins' wife died. He reached inside his skin coat and there he felt papers which he had taken from the hole in the lob-stick tree. They were safe. For twenty years he had guarded them. To-morrow he would take them to the great company at Prince Albert. And after that—after he had done this thing, what would there remain in life for Jan Thoreau? Perhaps the company might take him, and he would remain in civilization. That would be best—for him. He would fight against the call of his forests as years and years ago he had fought against that call of the Other World that had filled him with unrest for a time. He had killed THAT. If he DID return to his forests, he would go far to the west, or far to the east. No one that had ever known him would hear again of Jan Thoreau.
Kazan had crept to his blanket, daring to encroach upon it inch by inch, until his great wolf-head lay upon Jan's arm. It was ten years ago that Jan had taken Kazan, a little half-blind puppy that he and Mélisse had chosen from a litter of half a dozen stronger brothers and sisters. Kazan was all that was left to him now. He loved the other dogs, but they were not like Kazan. He tightened his arm about the dog's head. Exhaustion, and the warmth of the fire, made him drowsy, and, after a time, he slept, with his head thrown back against the tree.
Something awoke him, hours afterward. He opened his eyes, and found that the fire was still burning brightly. On the far side of it, beyond the dogs, sat Thornton. A look at the sky, where the stars were dying, and Jan knew that it was just before the gray break of dawn. He sat upright. Thornton laughed softly at him, and puffed out clouds of smoke from his pipe.
"You were freezing," he said, as Jan stared, "and sleeping like a dead man. I waited for you back there, and then hunted you up. You know—I thought—" He hesitated, and knocked the ash from his pipe bowl. Then he looked frankly and squarely at Jan. "See here, old man, if you're hard up—had trouble of any sort—bad luck—got no money—won't you let me help you out?"
"Thank you, m'sieur—I have money," said Jan. "I prefer to sleep outside with the dogs. Mon Dieu, I guess I would have been stiff with the frost if you had not come. You have been here—all night?"
Thornton nodded.
"And it is morning," exclaimed Jan, rising and looking above the spruce tops. "You are kind, m'sieur. I wish I might do as much for you."
"You can," said Thornton quietly. "Where are you going—from here?"
"To the company's offices at Prince Albert. We will start within an hour."
"Will you take me with you?" Thornton asked.
"With pleasure!" cried Jan. "But it will be a hard journey, m'sieur. I must hurry, and you may not be accustomed to running behind the dogs."
Thornton rose and stretched out a hand.
"It can't be too hard for me," he said. "I wish—"
He stopped, and something in his low voice made Jan look straight into his eyes. For a moment they gazed at each other in silence, and again Jan saw in Thornton's face the look of loneliness and grief which he had first seen in the half gloom of the hotel. It was the suppressed note in Thornton's voice, of despair almost, that struck him deepest, and made him hold the other's hand a moment longer. Then he turned to his pack upon the sledge.
"I've got meat and coffee and hard biscuits," he said. "Will you have breakfast with me?"
That day Jan and Thornton made fifty miles westward over the level surface of the Saskeram, and camped again on the Saskatchewan. The second day they followed the river, passed the Sipanock, and struck south and west over the snow-covered ice for Prince Albert. It was early afternoon of the fourth day when at last they came to the town.
"We will go to the offices of the great company," said Jan. "We will lose no time."
It was Thornton now who guided him to the century-old building at the west edge of the town. It was Thornton who led him into an office filled mostly with young women, who were laboring at clicking machines; and it was Thornton who presented a square bit of white card to a gray-haired man at a desk, who, after reading it, rose from his chair, bowed, and shook hands with him. And a few moments later a door opened, and Jan Thoreau, alone, passed through it, his heart quivering, his breath choking him, his hand clutching at the papers in his breast pocket.
Outside Thornton waited. An hour passed and still the door did not reopen. The man at the desk glanced curiously at Thornton. Two girls at typewriters exchanged whispered opinions as to who might be this wild-looking creature from the north who was taking up an hour of the sub-commissioner's time. Nearly two hours passed before Jan appeared. Thornton, still patient, rose as the door opened. His eyes first encountered the staring face of the sub-commissioner. Then Jan came out. He had aged five years in two hours. There was a tired stoop to his shoulders, a strange pallor in his cheeks. To Thornton his thin face seemed to have grown thinner. With bowed head, looking nowhere but ahead of him, Jan passed on, and as the last door opened to let them out into the pale winter sun, Thornton heard the muffled sobbing of his breath. His fingers gripped Jan's arm, his eyes were blazing.
"If you're getting the wrong end of anything up there," he cried fiercely; "if you're in trouble, and they're taking the blood out of you—tell me and I'll put the clamps on 'em, so 'elp me God! They'll buck the devil when they buck Jack Thornton, and if it needs money to show 'em so, I've got half a million to teach 'em the game!"
"Thanks, m'sieur," struggled Jan, striving to keep a lump out of his throat. "It's nothing like that. I don't need money. Half a million would just about buy—what I've given away up there."
He clutched his hand for an instant to the empty pocket where the papers had been.
That night, leaving Thornton still at supper in the little old Windsor Hotel, Jan slipped away, and with Kazan at his heels, crossed the frozen Saskatchewan to the spruce forest on the north shore. He wanted to be alone, to think, to fight with himself against a desire which was almost overpowering him. Once, long ago, he had laid his soul bare to Jean de Gravois, and Jean had given him comfort. To-night he longed to go to Thornton, as he had gone to Jean, and to tell him the same story, and what had passed that day in the office of the sub-commissioner. In his heart there had grown something for Thornton that was stronger than friendship—something that would have made him fight for him, and die for him, as he would have fought and died for Jean de Gravois. It was a feeling cemented by a belief that something was troubling Thornton—that he, too, was filled with a loneliness and a grief which he was trying to conceal. And yet he fought to restrain himself from confiding in his new friend. It would do no good, he knew, except by relieving him of a part of his mental burden. He walked along the shore of the river and recrossed it again near the company's offices. All were dark with the exception of the sub-commissioner's room. In that there glowed a light. The sub-commissioner was keeping his promise. He was working. He worked until late, for Jan came back two hours after and saw the light still there.
A week—it might be ten days, the sub-commissioner had told him, and it would be over. Always something in the north drew Jan's eyes, and he looked there now, wondering what would happen to him after that week was over.
Lights were out and people were in bed when he and Kazan returned to the hotel. But Thornton was up, sitting by himself in the gloom, as Jan had first seen him at Le Pas. Jan sat down beside him. There was an uneasy tremor in Thornton's voice when he said:
"Jan, did you ever love a woman—love her until you were ready and willing to die for her?"
The suddenness of the question wrung the truth from Jan's lips in a low, choking voice. For an instant he thought that Thornton must have guessed his secret.
"Yes, m'sieur."
Thornton leaned toward him, gripping his knees, and the misery in his face was deeper than Jan had ever seen it before.
"I love a woman—like that," he went on tensely. "A girl—not a woman, and she is one of your people, Jan—of the north, as innocent as a flower, more beautiful to ME than—than all the women I have ever seen before. She is at Oxford House. I am going home to—to save myself." "Save yourself!" cried Jan. "Mon Dieu, m'sieur—does she not love you?"
"She would follow me to the end of the earth!"
"Then—"
Thornton straightened himself and wiped his pale face. Suddenly he rose to his feet and motioned for Jan to follow him. He walked swiftly out into the night, and still faster after that, until they passed beyond the town. From where he stopped they could look over the forests far into the pale light of the south.
"THAT'S hell for me!" said Thornton, pointing. "It's what we call civilization—but it's mostly hell, and it's all hell for me. It's a hell of big cities, of strife, of blood-letting, of wickedness. I never knew how great a hell it was until I came up here—among YOU. I wish to God I could stay—always!"
"You love her," breathed Jan. "You can stay."
"I can't," groaned Thornton. "I can't—unless—"
"What, m'sieur?"
"Unless I lose everything—but her."
Jan's fingers trembled as they sought Thornton's hand.
"And everything is—is—nothing when you give it for love and happiness," he urged. "The great God, I know—"
"Everything," cried Thornton. "Don't you understand? I said EVERYTHING!" He turned almost fiercely upon his companion. "I'd give up my name—for HER. I'd bury myself back there in the forests and never go out of them—for HER. I'd give up fortune, friends, lose myself for ever—for HER. But I can't. Good God, don't you understand?"
Jan stared. His eyes grew large and dark.
"I've spent ten years of WORSE than hell down there—with a woman," went on Thornton. "It happens among us—frequently, this sort of hell. I came up here to get out of it for a time. You know—now. There is a woman down there who—who is my wife. She would be glad if I never returned. She is happy now, when I am away, and I have been happy—for a time. I know what love is. I have felt it. I have lived it. God forgive me, but I am almost tempted to go back—to HER!"
He stopped at the change which had come in Jan, who stood as straight and as still as the blank spruce behind them, with only his eyes showing that there was life in him. Those eyes held Thornton's. They burned upon him through the gray gloom as he had never seen human eyes burn before. He waited, half startled, and Jan spoke. In his voice there was nothing of that which Thornton saw in his eyes. It was low, and soft, and though it had that which rung like steel, Thornton could not have understood or feared it more.
"M'sieur, how far have you gone—WITH HER?" Thornton understood and advanced with his hands reaching out to Jan.
"Only as far as one might go with the purest thing on earth," he said. "I have sinned—in loving her, and in letting her love me, but that is all, Jan Thoreau. I swear that is all!"
"And you are going back into the south?"
"Yes, I am going back into the south."
The next day Thornton did not go. He made no sign of going on the second day. So it was with the third, the fourth, and the fifth. On each of these days Jan went once, in the afternoon, to the office of the sub-commissioner, and Thornton always accompanied him. At times, when Jan was not looking, there was a hungry light in his eyes as he followed the other's movements, and once or twice Jan caught what was left of this look when he turned unexpectedly. He knew what was in Thornton's mind, and he pitied him, grieved with him in his own heart until his own secret almost wrung itself from his lips. Somehow, in a way that he could not understand, Thornton's sacrifice to honor, and his despair, gave Jan strength, and a hundred times he asked himself if a confession of his own misery would do as much for the other. He repeated this thought to himself again and again on the afternoon of the ninth day, when he went to the sub-commissioner's office alone. This time Thornton had remained behind. He had left him in a gloomy corner of the hotel room from which he had not looked up when Jan went out with Kazan.
This ninth day was the last day for Jan Thoreau. In a dazed sort of way he listened as the sub-commissioner told him that the work was ended. They shook hands. It was dark when Jan came out from the company's offices, dark with a pale gloom through which the stars were beginning to glow—with a ghostly gloom, lightened still more in the north with the rising fires of the northern lights. Alone Jan stood for a few moments close down to the river. Across from him was the forest, silent, black, reaching to the end of the earth, and over it, like a signal light, beckoning him back to his world, the aurora sent out its shafts of red and gold. And as he listened there came to him faintly a distant wailing sound that he knew was the voice from that world, and at the sound the hair rose along Kazan's spine, and he whined deep down in his throat. Jan's breath grew quicker, his blood warmer. Over there—across the river—his world was calling to him, and he, Jan Thoreau, was now free to go. This very night he would bury himself in the forest again, and when he lay down to sleep it would be with his beloved stars above him, and the winds whispering sympathy and brotherhood to him in the spruce tops. He would go—NOW. He would say good-by to Thornton—and GO.
He found himself running, and Kazan ran beside him. He was breathless when he came to the one lighted street of the town. He hurried to the hotel and found Thornton sitting where he had left him.
"It is ended, m'sieur," he cried in a low voice. "It is over, and I am going. I am going to-night."
Thornton rose. "To-night," he repeated.
"Yes, to-night—now. I am going to pick up my things. Will you come?"
He went ahead of Thornton to the bare little room in which he had slept while at the hotel. He did not notice the change in Thornton until he had lighted a lamp. Thornton was looking at him doggedly. There was an unpleasant look in his face, a flush about his eyes, a rigid tenseness in the muscles of his jaws.
"And I—I, too, am going to-night," he said. "Into the South, m'sieur?"
"No, into the NORTH." There was a fierceness in Thornton's emphasis. He stood opposite Jan, leaning over the table on which the light was placed. "I've broken loose," he went on. "I'm not going south—back to that hell of mine. I'm never going south again. I'm dead down there—dead for all time. They'll never hear of me again. They can have my fortune—everything. I'm going North. I'm going to live with YOU people—and God—AND HER!"
Jan sank into a chair, Thornton sat down in one across from him.
"I am going back to her," he repeated. "No one will ever know."
He could not account for the look in Jan's eyes nor for the nervous twitching of the lithe brown hands that reached half across the table. But Kazan's one eye told him more than Thornton could guess, and in response to it that ominous shivering wave rose along his spine. Thornton would never know that Jan's fingers twitched for an instant in their old mad desire to leap at a human throat.
"You will not do that," he said quietly.
"Yes, I will," replied Thornton. "I have made up my mind. Nothing can stop me but—death."
"There is one other thing that can stop you, and will, m'sieur," saidJan as quietly as before. "I, Jan Thoreau, will stop you."
Thornton rose slowly, staring down into Jan's face. The flush about his eyes grew deeper.
"I will stop you," repeated Jan, rising also. "And I am not death."
He went to Thornton and placed his two hands upon his shoulders, and in his eyes there glowed now that gentle light which had made Thornton love him as he had loved no other man on earth.
"M'sieur, I will stop you," he said again, speaking as though to a brother. "Sit down. I am going to tell you something. And when I have told you this you will take my hand, and you will say, 'Jan Thoreau, I thank the Great God that something like this has happened before, and that it has come to my ears in time to save the one I love.' Sit down, m'sieur."
Jan had aged five years during those two hours in the office of the sub-commissioner; he aged now as Thornton looked at him. There came the same tired, hopeless glow into his eyes, the same tense lines in his face. And yet, quickly, he changed as he had not changed on that afternoon. Two livid spots began to burn in his cheeks as he sat down opposite Thornton. He turned the light low, and his eyes glowed more darkly and with an animal-like luster in the half gloom. Something in him now, a quivering, struggling passion that lay behind those eyes, held Thornton white and silent.
"M'sieur," he began in the low voice which Thornton was beginning to understand, "I am going to tell you something which I have told to but two other human beings. It is the story of another man—a man from civilization, like you, who came up into this country of ours years and years ago, and who met a woman, as you have met this girl at Oxford House, and who loved her as you love this one, and perhaps more. It is singular that the case should be so similar, m'sieur, and it is because of this that I believe Our Blessed Lady gives me courage to tell it to you. For this man, like you, left a wife—and two children—when he came into the North. M'sieur, I pray the Great God to forgive him, for he left a third child—unborn."
Jan leaned upon his hand so that it shaded his face.
"It is not so much of THAT as of what followed that I am going to tell you, m'sieur," he went on. "It was a beautiful love—on the woman's part, and it would have been a beautiful love on the man's part if it had been pure. For her he gave up everything, even his God—as you would give up everything—and your God—for this girl at Oxford House. M'sieur, I will speak mostly of the woman now. She was beautiful. She was one of the three most beautiful things that God ever placed in our world, and she loved this man. She married him, believed in him, was ready to die for him, to follow him to the ends of the earth, as our women will do for the men they love. God in Heaven, can you not guess what happened, m'sieur? A CHILD WAS BORN!"
So fiercely did Jan cry out the words that Thornton jerked back as though a blow had been struck at him from out of the gloom.
"A child was born!" repeated Jan, and Thornton heard his nails digging in the table. "That was the first curse of God—a child! La Charogne—les bêtes de charogne—that is what we call them—beasts of carrion and carrion eaters, breeders of devils and sin! Mon Dieu, that is what happened! A child was born, with the curse of God upon him!"
Jan stopped, his nails digging deeper, his breath escaping from him as though he had been running.
"Down in YOUR world he would have grown up a MAN," he continued, speaking more calmly. "I have heard that—since. It is common down there to be a two-legged carrion—a man or a woman born out of wedlock. I have been told so, and that it is a curse not without hope. But here it is different. The curse never dies. It follows, day after day, year after year. And this child—more unfortunate than the wild things, was born one of them. Do you understand, m'sieur? If the winds had whispered the secret nothing would have come near him—the Indian women would sooner have touched the plague—he would have been an outcast, despised as he grew older, pointed at and taunted, called names which are worse than those called to the lowest and meanest dogs. THAT is what it means to be born under that curse—up here."
He waited for Thornton to speak, but the other sat silent and moveless across the table.
"The curse worked swiftly, m'sieur. It came first—in remorse—to the man. It gnawed at his soul, ate him alive, and drove him from place to place with the woman and the child. The purity and love of the woman added to his suffering, and at last he came to know that the hand of God had fallen upon his head. The woman saw his grief but did not know the reason for it. And so the curse first came to her. They went north—far north, above the Barren Lands, and the curse followed there. It gnawed at his life until—he died. That was seven years after the child was born."
The oil lamp sputtered and began to smoke, and with a quick movementJan turned the wick down until they were left in darkness.
"M'sieur, it was then that the curse began to fall upon the woman and the child. Do you not believe that about the sins of the fathers falling upon others? Mon Dieu, it is so—it is so. It came in many small ways—and then—the curse—it came suddenly—LIKE THIS." Jan's voice came in a hissing whisper now. Thornton could feel his hot breath as he leaned over the table, and in the darkness Jan's eyes shone like two coals of fire. "It came like THIS!" panted Jan. "There was a new missioner at the post—a—a Christian from the South, and he was a great friend to the woman, and preached God, and she BELIEVED him. The boy was very young, and saw things, but did not understand at first. He knew, afterward, that the missioner loved his mother's beauty, and that he tried hard to win it—and failed, for the woman, until death, would love only the one to whom she had given herself first. Great God, it happened THEN—one night when every soul was about the big fires at the caribou roast, and there was no one near the lonely little cabin where the boy and his mother lived. The boy was at the feast, but he ran home—with a bit of dripping meat as a gift for his mother—and he heard her cries, and ran in to be struck down by the missioner. It happened THEN, and even the boy knew, and followed the man, shrieking that he had killed his mother." There was a terrible calmness now in Jan's voice. "M'sieur, it was true. She wasted away like a flower after that night. She died, and left the boy alone with the curse. And that boy, m'sieur, was Jan Thoreau. The woman was his mother."
There was silence now, a dead, pulseless quiet, broken after a moment by a movement. It was Thornton, groping across the table. Jan felt his hands touch his arm. They groped farther in the darkness, until Jan Thoreau's hands were clasped tightly in Thornton's.
"And that—is all?" he questioned hoarsely.
"No, it is but the beginning," said Jan softly. "The curse has followed me, m'sieur, until I am the unhappiest man in the world. To-day I have done all that is to be done. When my father died he left papers which my mother was to give to me when I had attained manhood. When she died they came to me. She knew nothing of that which was in them, and I am glad. For they told the story that I have told to you, m'sieur, and from his grave my father prayed to me to make what restitution I could. When he came into the North for good he brought with him most of his fortune—which was large, m'sieur—and placed it where no one would ever find it—in the stock of the Great Company. A half of it, he said, should be mine. The other half he asked me to return to his children, and to his real wife, if she were living. I have done more than that, m'sieur. I have given up all—for none of it is mine. A half will go to the two children whom he deserted. The other half will go to the child that was unborn. The mother—is—dead."
After a time Thornton said,
"There is more, Jan."
"Yes, there is more, m'sieur," said Jan. "So much more that if I were to tell it to you it would not be hard for you to understand why Jan Thoreau is the unhappiest man in the world. I have told you that this is but the beginning. I have not told you of how the curse has followed me and robbed me of all that is greatest in life—how it has haunted me day and night, m'sieur, like a black spirit, destroying my hopes, turning me at last into an outcast, without people, without friends, without—that—which you, too, will give up in this girl at Oxford House. M'sieur, am I right? You will not go back to her. You will go south, and some day the Great God will reward you."
He heard Thornton rising in the dark.
"Shall I strike a light, m'sieur?"
"No," said Thornton close to him. In the gloom their hands met. There was a change in the other's voice now, something of pride, of triumph, of a glory just achieved. "Jan," he said softly, "I thank you for bringing me face to face with a God like yours. I have never met Him before. We send missionaries up to save you, we look upon you as wild and savage and with only half a soul—and we are blind. You have taught me more than has ever been preached into me, and this great, glorious world of yours is sending me back a better man for having come into it. I am going—south. Some day I will return, and I will be one of this world, and one of your people. I will come, and I will bring no curse. If I could send this word to HER, ask her forgiveness, tell her what I have almost been and that I still have hope—faith—I could go easier down into that other world."
"You can," said Jan. "I will take this word for you, m'sieur, and I will take more, for I will tell her what it has been the kind fate for Jan Thoreau to find in the heart of M'sieur Thornton. She is one of my people, and she will forgive, and love you more for what you have done. For this, m'sieur, is what the Cree god has given to his people as the honor of the great snows. She will still love you, and if there is to be hope it will burn in HER breast, too. M'sieur—"
Something like a sob broke through Thornton's lips as he moved back through the darkness.
"And you—I will find you again?"
"They will know where I go from Oxford House. I will leave word—withHER," said Jan.
"Good-by," said Thornton huskily.
Jan listened until his footsteps had died away, and for a long time after that he sat with his head buried in his arms upon the little table. And Kazan, whining softly, seemed to know that in the darkened room had come to pass the thing which broke at last his master's overburdened heart.