For days Marcel's youth and strength battled with the fever aggravated by infection in the deep wound. All that Gillies and Père Breton could do for the stricken man was done, but barring the simple remedies which stock the medicine chest of a post in the far north and the most limited knowledge of surgery possessed by the factors, the recovery of a patient depends wholly upon his vitality and constitution. With medical aid beyond reach, men die or fight back to health through the toughness of their fiber alone.
There was a time when Jean Marcel journeyed far toward the dim hills of a land from which there is no trail home for the feet of the voyageur. There were nights when Julie Breton sat with her brother and Jules, or McCain, stark fear in their hearts that the sun would never again lift above the Whale River hills for Jean Marcel, never again his daring paddle flash in sunlit white-water, or his snow-shoes etch their webbed trail on the white floor of the silent places.
And during these days the impatient Wallace chafed with longing for the society of Julie whose pity for the sick man had made of her an indefatigable nurse. A few words in the morning and an hour or two at night was all the time she allotted the man to whom she had given her heart.
To the demand of the Inspector in the presence of Père Breton that Julie should substitute a Cree woman as nurse, she had replied:
"He has no one but us. His people are dead. He has been like a brother to me. I can do no less than care for him, poor boy!"
"Yes," added Père Breton, "he is as my son. Julie is right," and added, with a smile, "you two will have much time in the future to see each other."
So Wallace had been forced to make the best of it.
By the time that the steamer, Inenew, from Charlton Island, appeared with the English mail, and the supplies and trade-goods for the coming year, Jean Marcel had fought his way back from the frontiers of death. So relieved seemed the girl, who had given lavishly of her young strength, that she allowed Mrs. Gillies to take her place in the sick room while she spent with Wallace the last days of his stay at Whale River.
Once more the post people saw the lovers constantly together and more than one head shook sadly at the thought of the one who had lost, lying hurt, in heart and body, on a cot at the Mission, while another took his place beside Julie Breton.
At last, the steamer sailed for Fort George and no one in the group gathered at the landing doubted that the heart of Julie Breton went with it when they saw the light in her dark eyes as she bade the handsome Wallace good-bye.