There was a postscript which Bob had overlooked. Now in folding the letter his eye caught it and he read it--a brief line added by Bessie, telling him not to think too much about his loss, for she was sure it would all be well in the end, and not to forget it was the Lord's will or it could not have happened, adding, "Remember, Bob, the Lord is always near you."
Nevertheless, Bob was very quiet at supper. He could not forget his tumbled air castles. He could not forget the fact that the returns from the present year's trapping would be insufficient to buy the next year's outfit.
"They was a band o' Injuns comes t' th' post just before I leaves, pretty nigh on their last legs," remarked Ed, when they had finished eating and he had lighted his pipe. "They was about as nigh starved as any passel o' men I ever seen, an' if they'd been starved much more they'd been dead. I hears some o' th' band did die before these gets out."
"Who were they?" asked Bob.
"Mountaineers," answered Ed. "They was back in th' country huntin', but don't find th' deer. They's camped down t' th' post now."
"Did you hear where 'bouts they was huntin'?" inquired Dick. "In th' nu'th'ard or s'uth'ard?"
"They all comes from th' nu'th'ard and west'ard o' th' post," said Ed. "They tells me they finds it th' worst year for fur an' game up that way they ever seen, an' I tells un 'tis th' same here."
"I wonders, now, how Shad an' th' Injuns he's with is makin' out. They'll be wonderful bad off, an' they don't run on th' deer," suggested Dick.
"They'll be likely t' find un up where they finds un when I was with un," reassured Bob, "but 'tis a long cruise there an' back."
Bob's loss was a keen disappointment to him. For several days it robbed him of ambition, and he tramped along the trails and attended to his traps dully and methodically, with a heavy heart. Then he began to say to himself: