The unearthly melody surged upward in a tumultuous wave of sound, until the auroral lights flickered like flames in the blast. The air became thick and silvery with frost crystals, while sharp cold settled along the ground. This was a night of frost, of death—of fearful and unutterable despair.
[1] The shout of the human voice repels and scatters the auroral lights. Hence many Indian legends.
PART III
THE HEART'S PEACE
CHAPTER I
LAMONT
A radiant flood of light poured from the white moon upon the rippling waters of the Red River. A grove of black oaks along the bank waved silently in the clear night; frogs chirped merrily from the fenced in fields, where fireflies sparkled and flashed before a long dark background of foliage. Along that portion of the shelving bank, where a young man and a dark-haired girl walked closely together, might be perceived on looking back the twinkling lights of Fort Garry, from whose stone walls the shadow of war had now lifted for ever. Nearer, outside the actual fort, a grey stunted tower shot upward from the thick of an oak bluff. Here rested in their last quiet many of the brave English and Canadian boys who had fallen in the late Rebellion.
Winter and spring had passed since the desertion of Menotah. That time had wrought change to the western and northern country, a change, sad perhaps, yet necessary from the standpoint of civilisation. The last traces of vengeful fire in the breasts of those who had joined the insurrection had been stamped out, the final agreement had been made, the white again triumphed. Louis Riel had swung upon the gallows at Regina, before the eyes of many on that dreary, treeless plain, that no traveller who has once seen can forget. There was no leader, no keen spirit left. So the survivors gladly snatched at that, only thing they could now ask for—pardon.