In midwinter of this third year, Jan returned to Lac Bain, and, hugging the delighted Mélisse close in his arms, he told her that never again would he go away without her. Mélisse, tightening her arms around his neck, made his promise sacred by offering her little rosebud of a mouth for him to kiss. Later, the restless spirit slumbering within his breast urged him to speak to Cummins.
"When Mélisse is a little older, should we not go with her into the
South?" he said. "She must not live for ever in a place like this."
Cummins looked at him for an instant as if he did not understand. When Jan's meaning struck home, his eyes hardened, and there was the vibrant ring of steel in his quiet voice.
"Her mother will be out there under the old spruce until the end of time," he said slowly; "and we will never leave her—unless, some day, Mélisse goes alone."
From that hour Jan no longer looked into the box of his violin. He struggled against the desire that had grown with his years until he believed that he had crushed it and stamped it out of his existence. In his life there came to be but one rising and one setting of the sun. Mélisse was his universe. She crowded his heart until beyond her he began to lose visions of any other world.
Each day added to his joy. He called her "my little sister," and with sweet gravity Mélisse called him "brother Jan," and returned in full measure his boundless love. He marked the slow turning of her flaxen hair into sunny gold, and month by month watched joyfully the deepening of that gold into warm shades of brown. She was to be like her mother! Jan's soul rejoiced, and in his silent way Cummins offered up wordless prayers of thankfulness.
So matters stood at Post Lac Bain in the beginning of Mélisse's ninth year, when up from the south there came a rumor. As civil war spreads its deepest gloom, as the struggle of father against son and brother against brother stifles the breathing of nations, so this rumor set creeping a deep pall over the forest people.
Rumor grew into rumor. From the east, the south and the west they multiplied, until on all sides the Paul Reveres of the wilderness carried news that the Red Terror was at their heels, and the chill of a great fear swept like a shivering wind from the edge of civilization to the bay.