"I shall remember them—always," she answered softly. "Some day it may be that I will teach them to you again."
He did not see her again until six months later, when he came in to the caribou roast, with his furs. Then he learned that another letter had come to Mélisse, and that Dixon had gone to London instead of coming to Lac Bain.
The day after the carnival he went back into the country of the Athabasca. Spring did not see him at Lac Bain. Early summer brought no news of him. In the floods, Jean went by the water-way to the Athabasca, and found Thoreau's cabin abandoned. There had not been life in it for a long time. The Indians said that since the melting snows they had not seen Jan. A half-breed whom Jean met at Fond du Lac said that he had found the bones of a white man on the Beaver, with a Hudson's Bay gun and a horn-handled knife beside them.
Jean came back to Lac Bain heavy at heart.
"There is no doubt but that he is dead," he told Iowaka. "I do not believe that it will hurt very much if you tell Mélisse."
One day early in September a lone figure came in to the post at noon, when the company people were at dinner. He carried a pack, and six dogs trailed at his heels. It was Jan Thoreau.
"I have been down to civilization," was his explanation. "I have returned to spend this winter at Lac Bain."
CHAPTER XXIV
THE RESCUE
On the first snow came young Dixon from Fort Churchill. Jean de Gravois met him on the trail near Ledoq's. When the Englishman recognized the little Frenchman he leaped from his sledge and advanced with outstretched hand, his face lighting up with pleasure.