nor tree to guide him, for everywhere was the heavy ghost-raiment of the Indian God.  The balsams were bending under it, the spruces were breaking into hunchback forms, the whole world was twisted in noiseless torture under its increasing weight, and out through the still terror of it all Jan’s voice went in wild echoing shouts.  Now and then he fired his rifle, and always he listened long and intently.  The echoes came back to him, laughing, taunting, and then each time fell the mirthless silence of the storm.  Night came, a little darker than the day, and Jan stopped to build a fire and eat sparingly of his food, and to sleep.  It was still night when he aroused himself and stumbled on.  Never did he take the weight of his rifle from his right hand or shoulder, for he knew this weight would shorten the distance traveled at each step by his right foot, and would make him go in a circle that would bring him back to the lake.  But it was a long circle.  The day passed.  A second night fell upon him, and his hope of finding Cummins was gone.  A chill crept in where his heart had been so warm, and somehow that soft pressure of a woman’s hand upon his seemed to become less and less real to him.  The woman’s prayers were following him, her heart was throbbing with its hope in him—­and he had failed!  On the third day, when the storm was over, Jan staggered hopelessly into the post.  He went straight to the woman, disgraced, heartbroken.  When he came out of the little cabin he seemed to have gone mad.  A wondrously strange thing had happened.  He had spoken not a word, but his failure and his sufferings were written in his face, and when Cummins’ wife saw and understood she went as white as the underside of a poplar leaf in a clouded sun.  But that was not all.  She came to him, and clasped one of his half-frozen hands to her bosom, and he heard her say, “God bless you forever, Jan!  You have done the best you could!” The Great God—­was that not reward for the risking of a miserable, worthless life such as his?  He went to his shack and slept long, and dreamed, sometimes of the woman, and of Cummins and Mukee, the half-Cree.

On the first crust of the new snow came the Englishman up from Fort Churchill, on Hudson’s Bay.  He came behind six dogs, and was driven by an Indian, and he bore letters to the factor which proclaimed him something of considerable importance at the home office of the Company, in London.  As such he was given the best bed in the factor’s rude home.  On the second day he saw Cummins’ wife at the Company’s store, and very soon learned the history of Cummins’ disappearance.