"Saints preserve us, but that was an ugly twist of the hand!" he cried shrilly. "Next time, turn your sledge by the rib instead of the nose, when your dogs are still in the traces!" Under his breath he whispered, as he made pretense of looking at Jan's hand: "Le diable, do you want to tell HIM?" Jan tried to laugh as Croisset came to see what had happened.
"Will you care for the dogs, Henri?" asked Jean. "It's only a trifling sprain of the wrist, which Iowaka can cure with one dose of her liniment."
As they walked away, Jan's face still as pallid as the gray snow under their feet, Gravois added: "You're a fool, Jan Thoreau. There's a crowd at your cabin, and you'll have dinner with me."
"La charogne!" muttered Jan. "Les bêtes de charogne!"
Jean gripped him by the arm.
"I tell you that it means nothing—nothing!" he said, repeating his words of the previous day in the cabin. "You are a man. You must fight it down, and forget. No one knows but you and me."
"You will never tell what you read in the papers?" cried Jan quickly.
"You swear it?"
"By the blessed Virgin, I swear it!"
"Then," said Jan softly, "Mélisse will never know!"
"Never," said Jean. His dark face flashed joyously as Iowaka's sweet voice came to them, singing a Cree lullaby in the little home. "Some day Mélisse will be singing that same way over there; and it will be for you, Jan Thoreau, as my Iowaka is now singing for me!"