These were days when something worse than disease was eating at the few big honest hearts that made up the life at the post.  The search for Cummins never ceased, and always the woman was receiving hope.  Now it was Williams who went far into the South, and brought back word that a strange white man had been seen among the Indians; then it was Thoreau, the Frenchman, who skirted the edge of the Barren Lands three days into the West, and said that he had found the signs of strange campfires.  And always Jan was on the move, to the South, the North, the East and the West.  The days began to lengthen.  It was dawn now at eight o’clock instead of nine, the silvery white of the sun was turning day by day more into the glow of fire, and for a few minutes at midday the snow softened and water dripped from the roofs.

Jan knew what it meant.  Very soon the thick crust of the “Beeg Snow” would drop in, and they would find Cummins.  They would bring what was left of him back to the post.  And then—­what would happen then?

Every day or two Jan found some pretext that took him to the little log cabin.  Now it was to convey to the woman a haunch of a caribou he had slain.  Again it was to bring her child a strange plaything from the forest.  More frequently it was to do the work that Cummins would have done.  He seldom went within the low door, but stood outside, speaking a few words, while Cummins’ wife talked to him.  But one morning, when the sun was shining down with the first promising warmth of spring, the woman stepped hack from the door and asked him in.

“I want to tell you something, Jan,” she said softly.  “I have been thinking about it for a long time.  I must find some work to do.  I must do something—­to earn—­money.”

Jan’s eyes leaped straight to hers in sudden horror.

“Work!”

The word fell from him as if in its utterance there was something of crime.  Then he stood speechless, awed by the look in her eyes, the hard gray pallor that came into her face.

“May God bless you for all you have done, Jan, and may God bless the others!  I want you to take that word to them from me.  But he will never come back, Jan—­never.  Tell the men that I love them as brothers, and always shall love them, but now that I know he is dead I can no longer live as a drone among them.  I will do anything.  I will make your coats, do your washing and mend your moccasins.  To-morrow I begin my first work—­for money.”

He heard what she said after that as if in a dream.  When he went out into the day again, with her word to his people, he knew that in some way which he could not understand this big, cold world had changed for him.  To-morrow Cummins’ wife was to begin writing letters for the Englishman!  His eyes glittered, his hands clenched themselves upon his breast, and all the blood in him submerged itself in one wild resistless impulse.  An hour later Jan and his four dogs were speeding swiftly into the South.