r door with the timidity of a child, and when
she opened it, her great eyes glowing at him in wild questioning, her
face white with a terrible fear, there was a chill at his heart which
choked back what he had come to say. He walked in dumbly and stood with
the snow falling off him in piles, and when Cummins' wife saw neither
hope nor foreboding in his dark, set face she buried her face in her
arms upon the little table and sobbed softly in her despair. Jan strove
to speak, but the Cree in him drove back what was French and "just
white," and he stood in mute, trembling torture. "Ah, the Great God!"
his soul was crying. "What can I do?"

Upon its little cot the woman's child was asleep. Beside the stove
there were a few sticks of wood. He stretched himself until his neck
creaked to see if there was water in the barrel near the door. Then he
looked again at the bowed head and the shivering form at the table. In
that moment Jan's resolution soared very near to the terrible.

"Mees Cummin, I go hunt for heem!" he cried. "I go hunt for heem--an'
fin' heem!"

He waited another moment, and then backed softly toward the door.

"I hunt for heem!" he repeated, fearing that she had not heard.

She lifted her face, and the beating of Jan's heart sounded to him like
the distant thrumming of partridge wings. Ah, the Great God--would he
ever forget that look! She was coming to him, a new glory in her eyes,
her arms reaching out, her lips parted! Jan knew how the Great Spirit
had once appeared to Mukee, the half-Cree, and how a white mist, like a
snow veil, had come between the half-breed's eyes and the wondrous
thing he beheld. And that same snow veil drifted between Jan and the
woman. Like in a vision he saw her glorious face so near to him that
his blood was frightened into a strange, wonderful sensation that it
had never known before. He felt the touch of her sweet breath, he heard
her passionate prayer, he knew that one of his rough hands was clasped
in both her own--and he knew, too, that their soft, thrilling warmth
would remain with him until he died, and still go into Paradise with
him.

When he trudged back into the snow, knee-deep now, he sought Mukee, the
half-breed. Mukee had suffered a lynx bite that went deep into the
bone, and Cummins' wife had saved his hand. After that the savage in
him was enslaved to her like an invisible spirit, and when Jan slipped
on his snowshoes to set out into the deadly chaos of the "Be