It was the strongest cry of his yearning heart; yet underneath lay an impotent rage at his own powerlessness to help in this preservation.
“For what is my manhood or my courage worth to her now? And even the Deity seems veiled by this deadening, suffocating mist!”
But Tempest moved steadily on once more, and the little child warmed to life on his breast; and by degrees the man’s self-torment ceased. Then he lifted his eyes afresh and struggled to pierce the gloom.
What was that? A light! A little yellow spot in the gray whiteness, which the horse was first to see and toward which he now hastened with a firmer speed.
“It’s a fire. No, a lamp in a house window. There, it’s gone. A will-o’-the-wisp by some hidden pool. It shines again. Well, Tempest sees it and believes in it.”
The man lacked the animal’s faith, and even when they had come to within a short distance of the glow, the clouds of vapor swept between it and them and Gaspar checked Tempest’s advance. But at last a slight wind rose, and the mist which rolled toward them was tinged with the odor of smoke, so the rider knew that his first surmise had been correct.
“It is a fire. A settler’s cabin, probably once this lost child’s home. The red man’s work!”
When he reached the very spot there were, indeed, the remnants of a great burning, yet in the circle of the light Gaspar saw a house still standing. He was at its threshold promptly, and entered through its open door upon a scene of desolation. A woman crouched by the hearth that was strewn with ashes, and her moans echoed through the gloom with so much of agony in them that the stranger’s worst fears were confirmed. Then he caught her murmured words, and they were all of one tenor:
“My baby! my baby! my baby! My one lost little child! The wolves—my little one—my all!”
Gaspar strode into the room, lighted only by the fitful glare from the ruins without, and gently spoke: