to Post Lac Bain, how would he know that the missionary was at the
bottom of the lake, and that Jean de Gravois was accountable for it?
So in the end Jan decided that it would be folly to stir up the little
hunter's fears, and he thought no more of the company's investigator
who had gone up to the Etawney.

But the second problem was one whose perplexities troubled him.
Cummins' word of the school at Churchill had put a new and thrilling
thought into his head, and always with that thought he coupled visions
of the growing Melisse. This year the school would be at Churchill,
and the next at York Factory, and after that it might be gone for
ever, so that when Melisse grew up there would be none nearer than
what Jan looked upon as the other end of the world. Why could not he
go to school for Melisse, and store up treasures which in time he
might turn over to her?

The scheme was a colossal one, by all odds the largest that had ever
entered into his dreams of what life held for him--that he, Jan
Thoreau, should learn to read and write, and do other things like the
people of the far South, so that he might help to make the little
creature in the cabin like her who slept under the watchful spruce. He
was stirred to the depths of his soul, now with fear, again with hope
and desire and ambition; and it was not until the first cold chills of
approaching winter crept down from the north and east that the
ultimate test came, and he told Cummins of his intention.

Once his mind was settled, Jan lost no time in putting his plans into
action. Mukee knew the trail to Churchill, and agreed to leave with
him on the third day--which gave Williams' wife time to make him a new
coat of caribou skin.