Her eyes were of a deep blue and as clear as the sky; but in
them, too, there was a strength that was not altogether feminine. There
was strength in her face, strength in the poise of her firm neck,
strength in every movement of her limbs and body. When she spoke, it was
in a voice which, like her hair, was adorable. I had never heard a
sweeter voice, and her firm mouth was all at once not only gentle and
womanly, but almost girlishly pretty.
I could understand, now, why Melisse Cummins was the heroine of a hundred
true tales of the wilderness, and I could understand as well why there
was scarcely a cabin or an Indian hut in that ten thousand square miles
of wilderness in which she had not, at one time or another, been spoken
of as "L'ange Meleese." And yet, unlike that other "angel" of flesh and
blood, Florence Nightingale, the story of Melisse Cummins and her work
will live and die with her in that little cabin two hundred miles
straight north of civilization. No, that is wrong. For the wilderness
will remember. It will remember, as it has remembered Father Duchene and
the Missioner of Lac Bain and the heroic days of the early voyageurs. A
hundred "Meleeses" will bear her memory in name--for all who speak her
name call her "Meleese," and not Melisse.
The wilderness itself may never forget, as it has never forgotten
beautiful Jeanne D'Arcambal, who lived and died on the shore of the great
bay more than one hundred and sixty years ago.
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