“Starving—poor wretch!” said Dallas. “No, no, Bel, don’t. It’s the last piece of the bread.”
“I can’t eat it,” replied Abel. “Let the poor brute have it. I can’t see it suffer like that.”
He broke up the cake and threw it piece after piece, each being snapped up with avidity, till there was no more, when the poor brute whined and licked Bel’s hand, and then turned, crawled nearer to the fire, laid his great rough head across Dallas’s foot, and lay blinking up at him, with the ice and snow which matted his dense coat melting fast.
“Poor beggar!” said Dallas. “He has been having a rough time.”
The dog whined softly, and the unpleasant odour of burning hair began to fill the place as his bushy tail was swept once into the glowing embers.
“Give him part of the moose bone, Dal,” said Abel.
“If this blizzard keeps on we have only that to depend on, old fellow. I want to help the dog, but I must think of you.”
“Give it up,” said Abel gloomily, as he laid a hand on his bandaged foot. “Give him what there is, and then let him lie down and die with us. The golden dream is all over now. Look! the poor brute just managed to struggle here. He’s dying.”
“No, settling down to sleep in the warm glow. Look how the water runs from his coat.”
“Dying,” said Abel positively. And the poor brute’s actions seemed to prove that the last speaker was right, for he lay whining more and more softly, blinking at the fire with his eyes half-closed, and a shiver kept on running through him, while once when he tried to rise he uttered a low moan and fell over on to his side.