understand, and which he made no great effort to understand. He talked
little, even to Cummins. He listened, and his eyes would answer, or he
would reply with strange, eery little hunches of his shoulders, which
ruffled up his hair. To the few simple souls at the post, he brought
with him more than his starved body from out of the unknown
wilderness. This was the chief cause of those things which he could
not understand.

No man learned more of him than had Cummins. Even to Mukee, his
history was equally simple and short. Always he said that he came from
out of the north--which meant the Barren Lands; and the Barren Lands
meant death. No man had ever come across them as Jan had come; and at
another time, and under other circumstances, Cummins and his people
would have believed him mad.

But others had listened to that strange, sweet music that came to them
from out of the forest on the night when the woman died, and they,
like Cummins, had been stirred by thrilling thoughts. They knew little
of God, as God is preached; but they knew a great deal about Him in
other ways. They knew that Jan Thoreau had come like a messenger from
the angels, that the woman's soul had gone out to meet him, and that
she had died sweetly on John Cummins' breast while he played. So the
boy, with his thin, sensitive face and his great, beautiful eyes,
became a part of what the woman had left behind for them to love. As a
part of her they accepted him, without further questioning as to who
he was or whence he came.

In a way, he made up for her loss. The woman had brought something new
and sweet into their barren lives, and he brought something new and
sweet--the music of his violin. He played for them in the evening, in