heart; but it passed quickly, for a second glance showed that the grave was old.
Dick turned away with a saddened heart; and that night, as he pored over the pages of his Bible, his mind was filled with many thoughts about eternity and the world to come. He, too, must come to the grave one day, and quit the beautiful prairies and his loved rifle. It was a sad thought; but while he meditated he thought upon his mother. “After all,” he murmured, “there must be happiness without the rifle, and youth, and health, and the prairie! My mother’s happy, yet she don’t shoot, or ride like wild-fire over the plains.” Then that word which had been sent so sweetly to him through her hand came again to his mind, “My son, give me thine heart;” and as he read God’s Book he met with the word, “Delight thyself in the Lord, and he shall give thee the desire of thine heart.” “The desire of thine hearth.” Dick repeated this, and pondered it till he fell asleep.
A misfortune soon after this befel Dick Varley which well-nigh caused him to give way to despair. For some time past he had been approaching the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains—those ragged, jagged, mighty hills which run through the whole continent from north to south in a continuous chain, and form, as it were, the backbone of America. One morning, as he threw the buffalo robe off his shoulders and sat up, he was horrified to find the whole earth covered with a mantle of snow. We say he was horrified, for this rendered it impossible to trace his companions either by scent or sight.
For some time he sat musing bitterly on his sad fate, while his dog laid his head sympathizingly on his arm.
“Ah, pup!” he said, “I know ye’d help me if ye could! But it’s all up now; there’s no chance of findin’ them.”
To this Crusoe replied by a low whine. He knew full well that something distressed his master, but he hadn’t yet ascertained what it was. As something had to be done, Dick put the buffalo robe on his steed, and mounting said, as he was in the habit of doing each morning, “Lead on, pup!”
Crusoe put his nose to the ground and ran forward a few paces, then he returned and ran about snuffing and scraping up the snow. At last he looked up and uttered a long melancholy howl.
“Ah! I knowed it,” said Dick, pushing forward. “Come on, pup; you’ll have to follow now. We must go on.”
8
