“It is late—­too late,” voiced Philip wonderingly.

But as he spoke he followed Jean.  The half-breed seemed to have risen out of his world now.  There was a wonderful light in his face, a something that seemed to reach back through centuries that were gone—­and in this moment Philip thought of Marechal, of Prince Rupert, of le Chevalier Grosselier—­of the adventurous and royal blood that had first come over to the New World to form the Great Company, and he knew that of such men as these was Jean Jacques Croisset, the forest man.  He understood now the meaning of the soft and faultless speech of this man who had lived always under the stars and the open skies.  He was not of to-day, but a harkening back to that long-forgotten yesterday; in his veins ran the blood red and strong of the First Men of the North.  Out into the night Philip followed him, bare-headed, with the moonlight streaming down from above; and he stopped only when Jean stopped, close to a little plot where a dozen wooden crosses rose above a dozen snow-covered mounds.

Jean stopped, and his hand fell on Philip’s arm.

“These are Josephine’s,” he said softly, with a sweep of his other hand.  “She calls it her Garden of Little Flowers.  They are children, M’sieur.  Some are babies.  When a little one dies—­if it is not too far away—­she brings it to Le Jardin—­her garden, so that it may not sleep alone under the lonely spruce, with the wolves howling over it on winter nights.  They must be lonely in the woodsy graves, she says.  I have known her to bring an Indian baby a hundred miles, and some of these I have seen die in her arms, while she crooned to them a song of Heaven.  And five times as many little ones she has saved, M’sieur.  That is why even the winds in the treetops whisper her name, L’Ange!  Does it not seem to you that even the moon shines brighter here upon these little mounds and the crosses?”

“Yes,” breathed Philip reverently.

Jean pointed to a larger mound, the one guardian mound of them all, rising a little above the others, its cross lifted watchfully above the other crosses; and he said, as if the spirits themselves were listening to him: 

“M’sieur, there is my wife, my Iowaka.  She died three years ago, but she is with me always, and even now her beloved voice is singing in my heart, telling me that it is not black and cold where she and the little ones are waiting, but that all is light and beautiful.  M’sieur”—­his voice dropped to a whisper—­“Could I sell my hereafter with her for the price of another woman’s love on earth?”

Philip tried to speak; and strange after a moment he succeeded in saying: 

“Jean, an hour ago, I thought I was a man.  I see how far short of that I have fallen.  Forgive me, and let me be your brother.  Such a love as yours is my love for Josephine.  And to-morrow—­”