All that spring and summer Jan spent in the thick caribou swamps andlow ridge-mountains along the Barrens. It was two months before heappeared at the post again, and then he remained only long enough topatch himself up and secure fresh supplies.
Melisse had suffered quietly during these two months, a grief andloneliness filling her heart which none knew but herself. Even fromIowaka she kept her unhappiness a secret; and yet when the gloom hadsettled heaviest upon her, she was still buoyed up by a persistenthope. Until Jan's last visit to Lac Bain this hope never quite went out.
The first evening after his arrival from the swamps to the west, hecame to the cabin. His beard had grown again. His hair was long andshaggy, and fell in shining dishevelment upon his shoulders. Thesensitive beauty of his great eyes, once responsive to every passinghumor in Melisse, flashing fun at her laughter, glowing softly in theirdevotion, was gone. His face was filled with the age-old silence of theforest man. Firmly and yet gently, it repelled whatever of the oldthings she might have said and done, holding her away from him as if bypower of a strong hand.
This time Melisse knew that there was left not even the last comfortingspark of hope within her bosom. Jan had gone out of her life for ever,leaving to her, as a haunting ghost of what they two had once been toeach other, the old violin on the cabin wall.
After he went away again, the violin became more and more to her whatit had once been to him. She played it as he had played it, sobbing herloneliness and her heart-break through its strings, in lone hoursclasping it to her breast and speaking to it as Jan had talked to it inyears gone by.
"If you could only tell me--if you only could!" she whispered to it oneday, when the autumn was drawing near. "If you could tell me about him,and what I might do--dear old violin!"
Once during the autumn Jan came in for supplies and traps, and his dogsand sledge. He was planning to spend the winter two hundred miles tothe west, in the country of the Athabasca. He was at Lac Bain for aweek, and during this time a mail-runner came in from Fort Churchill.
The runner brought a new experience into the life of Melisse--her firstletter. It was from young Dixon--twenty or more closely written pagesof it, in which he informed her that he was going to spend a part ofthe approaching winter at Lac Bain.
She was reading the last page when Jan came into the cabin. Her cheekswere slightly flushed by this new excitement, which was reflected inher eyes as she looked at Jan.
"A letter!" she cried, holding out her two hands filled with the pages."A letter--to me, Jan, all the way from Fort Churchill!"
"Who in the world--" he began, smiling at her; and stopped.
"It's from Mr. Dixon," she said, the flush deepening in her cheeks."He's going to spend part of the winter with us."
"I'm glad of that, Melisse," said Jan quietly. "I like him, and wouldlike to know him better. I hope he will bring you some more books--andstrings." He glanced at the old violin. "Do you play much?"
"A great deal," she replied. "Won't you play for me, Jan?"
"My hands are too rough; and besides, I've forgotten all that I everknew."
"Even the things you played when I was a baby?"
"I think I have, Melisse. But you must never forget them."
"I shall remember them--always," she answered softly. "Some day it maybe that I will teach them to you again."
He did not see her again until six months later, when he came in to thecaribou roast, with his furs. Then he learned that another letter hadcome to Melisse, and that Dixon had gone to London instead of coming toLac Bain.
The day after the carnival he went back into the country of theAthabasca. Spring did not see him at Lac Bain. Early summer brought nonews of him. In the floods, Jean went by the water-way to theAthabasca, and found Thoreau's cabin abandoned. There had not been lifein it for a long time. The Indians said that since the melting snowsthey had not seen Jan. A half-breed whom Jean met at Fond du Lac saidthat he had found the bones of a white man on the Beaver, with aHudson's Bay gun and a horn-handled knife beside them.
Jean came back to Lac Bain heavy at heart.
"There is no doubt but that he is dead," he told Iowaka. "I do notbelieve that it will hurt very much if you tell Melisse."
One day early in September a lone figure came in to the post at noon,when the company people were at dinner. He carried a pack, and six dogstrailed at his heels. It was Jan Thoreau.
"I have been down to civilization," was his explanation. "I havereturned to spend this winter at Lac Bain."