"Mon Dieu, M'seur, has she not saved your life! Listen to this! It was then--when she knew what had happened--that Meleese came to me--whom she had made the happiest man in the world because it was she who brought my Mariane over from Churchill on a visit especially that I might see her and fall in love with her, M'seur--which I did. Meleese came to me--to Jean Croisset--and instead of planning your murder, M'seur, she schemed to save your life--with me--who would have cut you into bits no larger than my finger and fed you to the carrion ravens, who would have choked the life out of you until your eyes bulged in death, as I choked that one up on the Great Slave! Do you understand, M'seur? It was Meleese who came and pleaded with me to save your life--before you had left Chicago, before she had heard more of you than your name, before--"
Croisset hesitated, and stopped.
"Before what, Jean?"
"Before she had learned to love you, M'seur."
"God bless her!" exclaimed Howland.
"You believe this, M'seur?"
"As I believe in a God."
"Then I will tell you what she did, M'seur," he continued in a low voice. "The plan of the brothers was to make you a prisoner near Prince Albert and bring you north. I knew what was to happen then. It was to be a beautiful vengeance, M'seur--a slow torturing death on the spot where the crime was committed sixteen years ago. But Meleese knew nothing of this. She was made to believe that up here, where the mother and father died, you would be given over to the proper law--to the mounted police who come this way now and then. She is only a girl, M'seur, easily made to believe strange things in such matters as these, else she would have wondered why you were not given to the officers in Prince Albert. It was the eldest brother who thought of her as a lure to bring you out of the town into their hands, and not until the last moment, when they were ready to leave for the South, did she overhear words that aroused her suspicions that they were about to kill you. It was then, M'seur, that she came to me."
"And you, Jean?"
"On the day that Mariane promised to become my wife, M'seur, I promised in Our Blessed Lady's name to repay my debt to Meleese, and the manner of payment came in this fashion. Jackpine, too, was her slave, and so we worked together. Two hours after Meleese and her brothers had left for the South I was following them, shaven of beard and so changed that I was not recognized in the fight on the Great North Trail. Meleese thought that her brothers would make you a prisoner that night without harming you. Her brothers told her how to bring you to their camp. She knew nothing of the ambush until they leaped on you from cover. Not until after the fight, when in their rage at your escape the brothers told her that they had intended to kill you, did she realize fully what she had done. That is all, M'seur. You know what happened after that. She dared not tell you at Wekusko who your enemies were, for those enemies were of her own flesh and blood, and dearer to her than life. She was between two great loves, M'seur--the love for her brothers and--"
Again Jean hesitated.
"And her love for me," finished Howland.
"Yes, her love for you, M'seur."
The two men rose from the table, and for a moment stood with clasped hands in the smoky light of lamp and dawn. In that moment neither heard a tap at the door leading to the room beyond, nor saw the door move gently inward, and Meleese, hesitating, framed in the opening.
It was Howland who spoke first.
"I thank God that all these things have happened, Jean," he said earnestly. "I am glad that for a time you took me for that other John Howland, and that Pierre Thoreau and his brothers schemed to kill me at Prince Albert and Wekusko, for if these things had not occurred as they have I would never have seen Meleese. And now, Jean--"
His ears caught sound of movement, and he turned in time to see Meleese slipping quietly out.
"Meleese!" he called softly. "Meleese!"
In an instant he had darted after her, leaving Jean beside the table. Beyond the door there was only the breaking gloom of the gray mornings but it was enough for him to see faintly the figure of the girl he loved, half turned, half waiting for him. With a cry of joy he sprang forward and gathered her close in his arms.
"Meleese--my Meleese--" he whispered.
After that there came no sound from the dawn-lit room beyond, but Jean Croisset, still standing by the table, murmured softly to himself: "Our Blessed Lady be praised, for it is all as Jean Croisset would have it--and now I can go to my Mariane!"
THE HONOR OF THE BIG SNOWS
Chapter VII. The Caribou Carnival
Chapter VIII. The Fight at Dawn
Chapter XII. A Rumor From the South
Chapter XVII. The Renunciation
Chapter XIX. The New Agent and His Son
Chapter XX. A Kiss and the Consequences