The next day the Englishman went to the woman’s cabin.  He did not return in the afternoon.  And that same afternoon, when Cummins’ wife came into the Company’s store, a quick flush shot into her cheeks and the glitter of blue diamonds into her eyes when she saw the Englishman standing there.  The man’s red face grew redder, and he shifted his gaze.  When Cummins’ wife passed him she drew her skirt close to her, and there was the poise of a queen in her head, the glory of mother and wife and womanhood, the living, breathing essence of all that was beautiful in Jan’s “honor of the Beeg Snows.”  But Jan, twenty miles to the south, did not know.

He returned on the fourth night and went quietly to his little shack in the edge of the balsam forest.  In the glow of the oil lamp which he lighted he rolled up his treasure of winter-caught furs into a small pack.  Then he opened his door and walked straight and fearlessly toward the cabin of Cummins’ wife.  It was a pale, glorious night, and Jan lifted his face to its starry skies and filled his lungs near to bursting with its pure air, and when he was within a few steps of the woman’s door he burst into a wild snatch of triumphant forest song.  For this was a new Jan who was returning to her, a man who had gone out into the solitudes and fought a great battle with the elementary things in him, and who, because of his triumph over these things, was filled with the strength and courage to live a great lie.  The woman heard his voice, and recognized it.  The door swung open, wide and brimful of light, and in it stood Cummins’ wife, her child hugged close in her arms.

Jan crowed close up out of the starry gloom.

“I fin’ heem, Mees Cummins—­I fin’ heem nint’ miles back in Cree wigwam—­with broke leg.  He come home soon—­he sen’ great love—­an’ these!”

And he dropped his furs at the woman’s feet....

“Ah, the Great God!” cried Jan’s tortured soul when it was all over.  “At least she shall not work for the dirty Englishman.”

First he awoke the factor, and told him what he had done.  Then he went to Williams, and after that, one by one, these three visited the four other white and part white men at the post.  They lived very near to the earth, these seven, and the spirit of the golden rule was as natural to their living as green sap to the trees.  So they stood shoulder to shoulder to Jan in a scheme that appalled them, and in the very first day of this scheme they saw the woman blossoming forth in her old beauty and joy, and at times fleeting visions of the old happiness at the post came to these lonely men who were searing their souls for her.  But to Jan one vision came to destroy all others, and as the old light returned to the woman’s eyes, the glad smile to her lips, the sweetness of thankfulness and faith into her voice, this vision hurt him until he rolled and tossed in agony at night, and by day his feet were never still.