ow would
be gone and it could be buried.

For a whole week after this sad duty was performed the father sat by
the cabin stove and brooded, a broken-hearted, dispirited counterpart
of what he had been at the Christmas time. It was the man's nature to
be silent in seasons of misfortune. During the previous year, when
luck had been so against him, this characteristic of silent brooding
had shown itself markedly, but then he did not remain in the house and
neglect his work as he did now. He seemed to have lost all heart and
all ambition. He scarcely troubled to feed the dogs, and the few tasks
that he did perform were evidently irksome and unpleasant to him, as
things that interfered with his reveries.

From morning until night Richard Gray nursed the grief in his bosom,
but never referred to the tragedy unless it was first mentioned by
another; and at such times he said as little as possible about it,
answering questions briefly, offering nothing himself, and plainly
showing that he did not wish to converse upon the subject.

Over and over again he reviewed to himself every phase of Bob's life,
from the time when, a wee lad, Bob climbed on his knee of an evening
to beg for stories of bear hunts, and great gray wolves that harried
the hunters, and how the animals were captured on the trail; and
through the years into which the little lad grew into youth and
approached manhood, down to the day that he left home, looking so
noble and stalwart, to brave, for the sake of those he loved, the
unknown dangers that lurked in the rude, wild wastes beyond the line
of blue mysterious hills to the northward. And now the poor remains
enclosed in the rough box that rested upon the scaffold outside were
all that remained of him. And that was the end of all the plans that
he and the mother had made for their son's future, of all their hopes
and fine pictures.

Mrs. Gray had never seen her husband in so downcast and despondent a
mood, and as the days passed she began to worry about him and finally
became alarmed. He had lost all interest in everything, and had a
strange, unnatural look in his eyes that she did not like.

One evening she sat down by his aide, and, taking his hand, said:

"Be a brave man, Richard, and bear up. Th' Lard's never let Bob die
so. That were _not_ Bob as th' wolves got. I'm knowin' our lad's
somewheres alive. I were dreamin' last night o' seem' he--an'--I feels
it--I feels it--an' I can't go agin my feelin'