Between his thoughts of Melisse and Lac Bain, he dreamed of that other
world; and several times during the winter he took the little roll
from the box of his violin, and read again and again the written pages
that it contained.
"Some time I will go," he assured himself always. "Some time, when
Melisse is a little older, and can go too."
To young MacDonald, the boy from Lac Bain was a "find." The Scottish
youth was filled with an immense longing for home; and as his
homesickness grew, he poured more and more into Jan's attentive ears
his knowledge of the world from which he had come. He told him the
history of the old brass cannon that lay abandoned among the vines and
bushes, where a fort had stood at Churchill many years before. He
described the coming of the first ship into the great bay; told of
Hudson and his men, of great wars that his listener had never dreamed
of, of kings and queens and strange nations. At night he read a great
deal to Jan out of books that he had brought over with him.
As the weeks and months passed, the strange spirit that was calling to
the forest boy out of that other world stirred more restlessly within
him. At times it urged him to confide in MacDonald what was hidden
away in the box of his violin.
The secret nearly burst from him one Sunday, when MacDonald said:
"I'm going home on the ship that comes over next summer.
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