It came naturally and easily, this "honor of the Beeg Snows." It
was an unwritten law which no man cared or dared to break, and to Jan,
with his Cree and his French and his "just white" blood, it was in full
measure just what the good God meant it to be.
He moved now toward the little isolated cabin, half hidden in its drift
of snow, keeping well in the deep shadows of the spruce and balsam, and
when he stopped again he saw faintly a gleam of light falling in a wan
streak through a big hole in a curtained window. Each night, always when
the twenty-odd souls of the post were deep in slumber, Jan's heart would
come near to bursting with joy at the sight of this grow from the
snow-smothered cabin, for it told him that the most beautiful thing in
the world was safe and well. He heard, suddenly, the slamming of a door,
and the young Englishman's whistle sounded shrill and untuneful as he
went to his room in the factor's house. For a moment Jan straightened
himself rigidly, and there was a strange tenseness in the thin, dark face
that he turned straight up to where the Northern Lights were shivering in
their midnight play. When he looked again at the light in the little
cabin the passion-blood was rushing through his veins, and he fingered
the hilt of the hunting knife in his belt.
The most beautiful thing in the world had come into Jan's life, and the
other lives at the post, just two summers before.
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