What do you
say to going back with me, Jan?"
The spirit surged through Jan in a hot flood, and it was only an
accident that kept him from saying what was in his heart.
They were standing with the icy bay stretching off in interminable
miles toward the pole. A little way from them, the restless tide was
beating up through the broken ice, and eating deeper into the frozen
shore. From out of the bank there projected, here and there, the ends
of dark, box-like objects, which, in the earlier days of the company,
had been gun-cases. In them were the bones of men who had lived and
died an age ago; and as Jan looked at the silent coffins, now falling
into the sea, another spirit--the spirit that bound him to Melisse--
entered into him, and he shuddered as he thought of what might happen
in the passing of a year.
It was this spirit that won. In the spring, Jan went back to Lac Bain
with the company's supplies. The next autumn he followed the school to
York Factory, and the third year he joined it at Nelson House. Then
the company's teacher died, and no one came to fill his place.
In midwinter of this third year, Jan returned to Lac Bain, and,
hugging the delighted Melisse close in his arms, he told her that
never again would he go away without her.
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