I left them with a heavy heart, with very great regret.
May asked me again to leave Patch with them; but when I told her that she had her father to talk with, whilst I had only a dog for company, she declared she was ashamed of having made so cruel a request.
My journey home was not a pleasant one. It was very dark, the sky was clouded, there was some wind and drifting snow. It was not so cold, however—it rarely is when the sky is overcast. But for Patch's sagacity, we might easily have gone astray.
So long as I kept my mind fixed on Mary Bell, remembered that I was not now solitary, I did well; but when, tired, cold, and miserable, I arrived at the hut so drear, so gloomy, I felt dreadful, and for a while I could barely look about me undismayed.
However, being fatigued enough and hungry, and the big fire making me drowsy, Patch and I were soon fed and fast, asleep, and forgetting our troubles and joys.
The following days I passed far from pleasantly. I sat moping by the fire, only rousing for food or fuel. I did not even think of working.
I could not go in to where I had left my poor friend's body to dig for gold—it was desecration, I thought; so I just sat eating, smoking, sleeping, and grumbling to myself, and longing for the time when I considered it would be right to go to the Bells' again.
Certainly this was very simple of me. I might have been sure they would have been pleased enough to see me; but, as I have said before, I was very diffident with ladies, and, I suppose, much more so since I had lived that isolated life.
However, I could not dismiss May's personality from my mind. I really did not try to—it was a delight to think about her. No matter what I did, or on what train of thought I was, everything led me to that young lady. Her face was always before me, it had such a hold on my imagination. Of course I had heard or read about love, the attraction between the sexes, and so forth, yet I never applied this knowledge to myself. I felt, even after the little I had seen of my sweet young friend, that I could do anything for her, that I would fain secure her continued companionship; yet, somehow, it never occurred to me to say to myself, "Bertie, you're falling in love with her; have a care, my lad."
This is the manner in which I sat mooning by my fire.