But the old man made no answer. He was fumbling at the door, which he presently opened and went hastily out.
Those left in the room looked askance at one another.
“Follow him, Sahanderry,” cried Roy; “bring him back; he cannot go like that. Be quick, man.”
Sahanderry hastened to the door, but a sharp cry without caused him to pause with his hand on the latch. The cry was followed by the howling of dogs; a peculiar long-drawn howl which the listener instantly recognized as proceeding from dogs that had become entangled or whose progress was in some measure impeded. The trio in the inner room again looked at one another, but this time it was with a smile of relief.
“That’s them,” asserted Sahanderry from the kitchen, “the dogs have found their way home and the sled has got stuck against something.” With this information he hurried outside.
But when he opened the door and stepped out, Sahanderry could see nothing; everything was obscured by the drifting snow. The wind rushed round the buildings from all points at once and seemed to gather additional impetus at every corner. The Indian paused, half blinded by the cutting wind and nipped by the intense cold. But the dogs, as if to baffle discovery and thereby prolong his apprehensions, became suddenly quiet. Taking a step forward he called to them in a loud voice. Just then a bulky object loomed suddenly out of the gloom and he came in violent contact with something which, although sufficiently substantial to cause him a shock and nearly send him off his feet, was at the same time curiously soft. Sahanderry recoiled from it with a thrill of apprehension and the thing, whatever it was, instantly passed into the house.
The dazed and vastly astonished Indian remained for a moment staring after the object. Then an idea of what it was struck him and he swiftly followed it. When he entered the house he found Roy Thursby bending over something which lay stretched upon a table, over which a blanket had been thrown. Delgezie was standing apart, nervous yet confident in his master’s power to restore animation to the apparently lifeless body he had just given into his charge.
After bending over the object for a moment longer, Roy looked up with a slight exclamation and a quick glance at Delgezie.
The old man’s quiet demeanor led Roy to suppose that he was laboring under the delusion that the body was that of Kasba. The mistake was very possible, for the object was enveloped in a “hairy coat,” and was covered with snow when Delgezie discovered it. He had evidently caught it from the sled without closely inspecting it and rushed into the house with the senseless David in the belief that it was Kasba he was carrying. Roy was debating how best to acquaint Delgezie with the error when the matter was taken entirely out of his hands by Sahanderry, who had drawn nigh and was now hurling a volley of questions at the unconscious boy.
Delgezie started as if electrified when the import of Sahanderry’s importunate questions dawned upon him. He glanced suspiciously around as if to perceive whether by any possibility the body could have been changed, then rushed to the table, where he gazed long and searchingly at David, whose existence he had evidently forgotten in his great despair for Kasba. Then wildly he turned, and, holding up his hands, cried in accents of direst agony: “She is my all, O God! Take not the tender branch and leave the old trunk standing!” Then, dropping his hands, he added as if to himself, “But I will find her or never return alive!”