"Always my sister--and never anything more to Jan Thoreau," he said
gently in French, as if he were speaking to a spirit in the old tree.
"That is the honor of these snows; it is what the great God means us
to be." The strife had gone from his voice; it rose strong and clear
as he stretched his arms high up along the shorn side of the spruce,
his eyes upon the silent plume that heard his oath. "I swear that Jan
Thoreau will never do wrong to the little Melisse!"
With a face white and set in its determination, he turned slowly away
from the tree. Far away, from the lonely depths of the swamp, there
came the wailing howl of a wolf--a cry of hungerful savageness that
died away in echoes of infinite sadness. It was like the howling of a
dog at the door of a cabin in which his master lay dead, and the sound
of it swept a flood of loneliness into Jan's heart. It was the death-
wail of his own last hope, which had gone out of him for ever that
night.
He listened, and it came again; but in the middle of it, when the
long, moaning grief of the voice was rising to its full despair, there
broke in a sharp interruption--a shrieking, yelping cry, such as a dog
makes when it is suddenly struck. In another moment the forest
thrilled with the deep-throated pack-call of the wolf who has started
a fresh kill.
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