“Sleep,” he said aloud, “and perhaps wake no more.”
He ate his hot meal once more and watched the dog take his portion before going to the door, to look out feebly and find all black, depressing darkness; not even a star to be seen.
“Night, night, black night!” he muttered as he carefully fastened up again, pegged the blankets across to keep out the cruel wind, carefully piled up the pieces of wood about the fire, as an afterthought carried out with a smile, with a big log that would smoulder far on into the next day for the sake of the dog.
“For I shall not want it,” he said sadly. “Poor brute! What will he do when I’m dead?”
The thought startled him, and he sat down and fixed his eyes upon the shaggy, hairy animal curled-up close to the fire, whose flames flickered and danced and played about, making the hair glisten and throwing the dog’s shadow back in a curious grotesque way.
Something like energy ran in a thrill through the watcher, and he shuddered and felt that he must do something to prevent that—it would be too horrible.
It was in a nightmare-like state he seemed to see people coming to the door at last. He could even hear them knocking and shouting, and at last using hatchets to crash a way in. For what? To find the dog there alive and stronger, ready to resent their coming, even to fighting and driving them away; but only to return, rifle or pistol armed, to destroy the brute for what it had done according to its nature, to keep itself alive.
And then, it seemed to Abel, in his waking dream, they shudderingly gathered together what they saw to cast into the ready-dug grave—the shaft in which he and Dallas had so laboriously but hopefully delved, in search of the magnet which had drawn them there—the gold.
He made a wild effort to drive away the horrible fancy, and at last with a weary sigh sank upon his bed, his last thought being:
“Would those at home ever know the whole truth?”