"The good God bless you, and keep you, and care for you ever more, my
Melisse," he whispered; and he walked slowly ahead of his dogs, across
the river, and into the Other World.
CHAPTER XXV
JACK THORNTON
There was music that night in Le Pas. Jan heard it before he came to
the first of the scattered lights, and the dogs pricked up their ears.
Kazan, the one-eyed, whined under his breath, and the weight at Jan's
heart grew heavier as the dog turned up his head to him in the
starlight. It was strange music, nothing like Jan had ever heard. It
was strange to Kazan, and set him whining, and he thrust his muzzle up
to his master's touch inquiringly. They passed on like shadows, close
to a big, lighted log building from which the music came, and with it
a tumult of laughter, of shuffling and stamping feet, of coarse
singing and loud voices. A door opened and a man and a woman came out.
The man was cursing, and the woman was laughing at him--laughing as
Jan had never heard a woman laugh before, and he held his breath as he
listened to the taunting mockery in it. Others followed the first man
and the first woman. Some passed quietly. A woman, escorted between
two men, screamed with merriment as she flung toward his shadowy
figure an object which fell with a crash against the sledge.
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