"Dear Father in Heaven, please take care of Jan!"
The days brought quick changes now. One morning the moose-horn called
Cummins to the door. It was the fifth day after Williams had gone south.
"There was no smoke this morning, and I looked through the window," shouted Croisset. "Mukee and the old man are both dead. I'm going to burn the cabin."
A stifled groan of anguish fell from Cummins' lips as he went like a dazed man to his cot and flung himself face downward upon it. Mélisse could see his strong frame shaking, as if he were crying like a child; and twining her arms tightly about his neck, she sobbed out her passionate grief against his rough cheek. She did not know the part that Mukee had played in the life of the sweet woman who had once lived in this same little cabin; she knew only that he was dead; that the terrible thing had killed him and that, next to her father and Jan, she had loved him more than any one else in the world.
Soon she heard a strange sound, and ran to the window. Mukee's cabin was in flames. Wild-eyed and tearless with horror, she watched the fire as it burst through the broken windows and leaped high up among the black spruce. In those flames was Mukee! She screamed, and her father sprang to her with a strange cry, running with her from the window into the little room where she slept.
The next morning, when Cummins went to awaken her, his face went as white as death. Mélisse was not asleep. Her eyes were wide open and staring at him, and her soft cheeks burned with the hot glow of fire.
"You are sick, Mélisse," he whispered hoarsely. "You are sick!"
He fell upon his knees beside her, and lifted her face in his hands. The touch of it sent a chill to his heart—such as he had not felt since many years ago, in that other room a few steps away.
"I want Jan," she pleaded. "I want Jan to come back to me!"
"I will send for him, dear. He will come back soon. I will go out and send Croisset."