Chapter XIV. The Break

"Open your letter, Irma. From the postmark, it is surely from Kalman. And what good writing it is! I have just had one from Jack."

Mrs. French was standing in the cosy kitchen of Simon Ketzel's house, where, ever since the tragic night when Kalman had been so nearly done to death, Irma, with Paulina and her child, had found a refuge and a home. Simon had not forgotten his oath to his brother, Michael Kalmar.

Irma stood, letter in hand, her heart in a tumult of joy, not because it was the first letter she had ever received in her life, but because the letter was from Kalman. She had one passion, love for her brother. For him she held a strangely mingled affection of mother, sister, lover, all in one. By day she thought of him, at night he filled her dreams. She had learned to pray by praying for Kalman.

"Aren't you going to open your letter?" said her friend, rejoicing in her joy.

"Yes," cried the girl, and ran into the little room which she shared with Paulina and her child.

Once in that retreat, she threw herself on her knees by the bed, put the letter before her, and pressed her lips hard upon it, her tears wetting it as she prayed in sheer joy. It was just sixteen months, one week, three days, and nine hours since she had watched, through a mist of tears, the train carrying him away to join the Macmillan outfit at Portage la Prairie. Through Jack French's letters to his sister she had been kept in close touch with her brother, but this was his first letter to herself.

How she laughed and wept at the rude construction and the quaint spelling, for the letter was written in her native tongue.

"My sister, my Irma, my beloved," the letter ran. Irma kissed the words as she read them. "How shall I ever write this letter, for it must be in our own beloved tongue? I could have written long ago in English, but with you I must write as I speak, only in our dear mother's and father's tongue. It is so hard to remember it, for everything and every one about me is English, English, English. The hounds, the horses, the cattle call in English, the very wind sounds English, and I am beginning not only to speak, but to think and feel in English, except when I think of you and of our dear mother and father, and when I speak with old Portnoff, an old Russian nihilist, in the colony near here, and when I hear him tell of the bad old days, then I feel and breathe Russian again. But Russia and all that old Portnoff talks about is far away and seems like a dream of a year ago. It is old Portnoff who taught me how to write in Russian.

"I like this place, and oh! I like Jack, that is, Mr. French, my master. He told me to call him Jack. He is so big and strong, so kind too, never loses his temper, that is, never loses hold of himself like me, but even when he is angry, speaks quietly and always smiles. One day Elluck, the Galician man