"She is all the world to me."
"Den we go, m'sieu. But first we feed an' rest zee dogs. We travel queeck, after, vous comprenez? I will a meal make, an' your head it will recover, den we travel lik' zee wind."
The trapper made his way into the still smouldering hut, and began to busy himself with preparations, whilst Stane looked round again. The darkness, and the figures lying in the snow gave the scene an indescribable air of desolation, and for a moment he stood without moving; then, as something occurred to him, he began to walk towards the place where he had been struck down. Three figures lay there huddled grotesquely in the snow, and to one of them he owed his life. Which of them was it? Two of the dead lay with their faces in the snow, but the third was on its back, face upward to the sky. He stood and looked into the face. It was that of the man whom he had grappled, and who had been struck down with the knife that he had expected to strike himself. He looked at the other two. An ax lay close to the hand of one, and he had no doubt that that one was the man who would have slain him. The third one was his saviour. He looked again, and as he noted the dress a cold fear gripped his heart, for it was the dress of a woman. He fell on his knees and turned the body over, then he bent over the face. As he did so, he started back, and a sharp cry came from his lips. The cry brought Jean Bènard from the hut at a run.
"What ees it, m'sieu?" he asked as he reached Stane who knelt there as if turned to stone.
"It is a dead girl," answered Stane, brokenly—"a girl who gave her life for mine."
The trapper bent over the prostrate form, then he also cried out.
"Miskodeed!"
"Yes! Miskodeed. I did not know it was she! She killed one of them with her knife, and she was slain by the other."
"Whom I keel with the bullet!" For a moment Jean Bènard said no more, but when he spoke again there was a choking sound in his voice. "I am glad I keel dat man! eef I haf not done so, I follow heem across zee world till it was done." Something like a sob checked his utterance. "Ah, m'sieu, I love dat girl. I say to myself all zee way from Good Hope dat I weel her marry, an' I haf the price I pay her fader on zee sledge. I see her las' winter; but I not know den how it ees with me; but when I go away my heart cry out for her, an' my mind it ees make up.... An' now she ees dead! I never tink of dat! I tink only of zee happy years dat we weel haf togeder!"
He dropped suddenly in the snow, and bent over the face in its frozen beauty, sobbing as only a strong man can. He bent lower and kissed the ice-cold lips, whilst Stane staggered to his feet, and moved away. He could not endure to look on Jean Bènard's grief. As he stood staring into the darkness of the wood, he had a flashing memory of the Indian girl's face as she had whisperingly asked him if he could not leave Helen, the very note in her voice sounded in his ears, and, he knew what it was no harm for him to know then, that this child of the wilderness had given him her love, unsought. She had loved him, and she had died for him, whilst a man who had loved her, now wept over her poor body. The tragedy of it all shook him, and the irony of Jean Bènard's grief was almost beyond endurance. A great humility filled his heart, and whilst he acquitted himself of blame, he regretted deeply his vehemence of repudiation. All her words came back to him in a flood. She must have guessed that he loved Helen; yet in the greatness of her love, she had risked her life without hope, and died for him without shrinking.