Mukee told this to Jan, for there was the bond of blood between them. It was a painting of life, and love, and purity. Deep down in the loneliness of his heart, Jan Thoreau, in his own simple way, thanked the great God that it had been given to him to play his violin as the woman died.
CHAPTER III
LITTLE MELISSE
The passing of Cummins' wife was as quiet as had been her coming. With bare heads, their shaggy hair falling wildly about their faces, their lips set tight to choke back their grief, the few at the post went, one by one, into the little cabin, and gazed for the last time upon her face. There was but one sound other than the gentle tread of their moccasined feet, and that was a catching, sobbing moan that fell from the thick gray beard of Williams, the old factor.
After that they carried her to where a clearing had been cut in the edge of the forest; and at the foot of a giant spruce, towering sentinel-like to the sky, they lowered her into the frozen earth. Gaspingly, Williams stumbled over the words on a ragged page that had been torn from a Bible. The rough men who stood about him bowed their wild heads upon their breasts, and sobs broke from them.
At last Williams stopped his reading, stretched his long arms above his head, and cried chokingly:
"The great God keep Mees Cummins!"
As the earth fell, there came from the edge of the forest the low, sweet music of Jan Thoreau's violin. No man in all the world could have told what he played, for it was the music of Jan's soul, wild and whispering of the winds, sweetened by some strange inheritance that had come to him with the picture which he carried in his throbbing heart.
He played until only the tall spruce and John Cummins stood over the lone grave. When he stopped, the man turned to him, and they went together to the little cabin where the woman had lived.
There was something new in the cabin now—a tiny, white, breathing thing over which an Indian woman watched. The boy stood beside John Cummins, looking down upon it, and trembling.