Speaking sharply to the poor beast, I clasped his muzzle, and he stopped. Then he sat staring at the blazing logs with a most sorrowful expression.
I don't know why, I can't tell what made me begin to tremble. I reached for a lighted sliver—I could hardly hold my hand still enough to light the lamp, I shook so—and when I had ignited it and turned it on to the face of my friend, I saw that he had not moved since he fell asleep. There he lay, stretched out on his back, sleeping still. Yes, surely, he was sleeping!
Softly I laid my hand on his forehead—it was cold as ice. I sought for one of his hands—it was cold and as stiff as if it were frozen. I put my hand upon his heart—there was no motion there.
Then like a flash it came to me that my dear friend was dead—ay, Meade was dead!
CHAPTER VI.
It is impossible to tell you what I felt when I realised that my friend had breathed his last.
I cannot myself remember what my thoughts and sensations were. I only know that I rushed out of the place—very lightly clothed, too—and in the open air stood gazing around me dazed.
The first few hours after that is nearly a blank to me. I can merely call to mind cold, hunger, snow, and poor Patch's evident distress. I made a fire outside and we sat by it, I repeating to myself, sometimes crying aloud, "What shall I do? What shall I do?"
Once I remember springing up and grasping a white shirt and a red one which lay by the door, and tying them to a long branch which arched across the creek conspicuously, saying to myself, "It may attract some one's notice,"—for, eager as we had been all along to keep our presence secret, now I would gladly have given half, ay, all the gold we had obtained, to secure the companionship of a human being.