"
The arms had slipped from his shoulders. Gently he ran his rough
fingers through the loose glory of the woman's hair, and stroked her
face as softly as he might have caressed the cheek of a sleeping
child.
"I will open the door, Melisse."
His moccasined feet made no sound as he moved across the little room
which was their home. At the door he paused and listened; then he
opened it, and the floods of the white night poured in upon him as he
stood with his eyes turned to where the cold, pale flashes of the
aurora were playing over the pole. There came to him the hissing,
saddening song of the northern lights--a song of vast, unending
loneliness, which they two had come to know as the music of the skies.
Beyond that mystery-music there was no sound. To the eyes of John
Cummins there was no visible movement of life. And yet he saw signs of
it--signs which drew his breath from him in choking gulps, and which
sent him out into the night, so that the woman might not hear.
It was an hour past midnight at the post, which had the Barren Lands
at its back door. It was the hour of deep slumber for its people; but
to-night there was no sleep for any of them. Lights burned dimly in
the few rough log homes. The company's store was aglow, and the
factor's office, a haven for the men of the wilderness, shot one
gleaming yellow eye out into the white gloom.
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