Perhaps she was not strictly beautiful, as most people judge; but she
was beautiful here, four hundred miles beyond civilization. Mukee, the
half-Cree, had never seen a white woman, for even the factor's wife
was part Chippewayan; and no one of the others went down to the edge
of the southern wilderness more than once each twelvemonth or so.

Melisse's hair was brown and soft, and it shone with a sunny glory
that reached far back into their conception of things dreamed of but
never seen. Her eyes were as blue as the early wild flowers that came
after the spring floods, and her voice was the sweetest sound that had
ever fallen upon their ears. So these men thought when Cummins first
brought home his wife, and the masterpiece which each had painted in
his soul and brain was never changed. Each week and month added to the
deep-toned value of that picture, as the passing of a century might
add to a Raphael or a Vandyke.

The woman became more human, and less an angel, of course, but that
only made her more real, and allowed them to become acquainted with
her, to talk with her, and to love her more. There was no thought of
wrong, for the devotion of these men was a great, passionless love
unhinting of sin. Cummins and his wife accepted it, and added to it
when they could, and were the happiest pair in all that vast
Northland.

The girl--she was scarce more than budding into womanhood--fell
happily into the ways of her new life. She did nothing that was
elementally unusual, nothing more than any pure woman reared in the
love of God and of a home would have done. In her spare hours she
began to teach the half-dozen wild little children about the post, and
every Sunday she told them wonderful stories out of the Bible. She