dark like his own--and before these eyes, which gazed upon him with
overwhelming love, all else faded away from before Jan Thoreau. The
fire went out of his eyes, his fingers relaxed, and after a little
while he got up out of the snow, shivering, and went back to the
cabin.

Cummins asked no questions. He looked at Jan from his cot, and watched
the boy silently as he undressed and went to bed; and in the morning
the whole incident passed from his mind. The intangible holds but
little fascination for the simple folk who live under the Arctic
Circle. Their struggle is with life, their joys are in its
achievement, in their constant struggle to keep life running strong
and red within them. Such an existence of solitude and of strife with
nature leaves small room for curiosity. So the nature of John Cummins
led him to forget what had happened, as he would have forgotten the
senseless running away of a sledge-dog, and its subsequent return. He
saw no tragedy, and no promise of tragedy, in the thing that had
occurred.

There was no recurrence of the strange excitement in Jan. He gave no
hint of it in word or action, and the thing seemed to be forgotten
between the two.

The education of the little Melisse began at once, while the post was
still deserted. It began, first of all, with Maballa. She stared
dumbly and with shattered faith at these two creatures who told her of
wonderful things in the upbringing of a child--things of which she had
never so much as heard rumor before. Her mother instincts were
aroused, but with Cree stoicism she made no betrayal of them.