"Bruvver Jim?" he would say, in his questioning little voice—"Bruvver
Jim?" And at last he added, "Bruvver Jim—do—yike—'ittle Nu—thans."
At this Miss Doc felt her heart give a stroke of pain, for something that was almost divination of things desolate in the little fellow's short years of babyhood was granted to her woman's understanding.
"Bruvver Jim will come," she said, as she knelt beside the bed. "He'll come back home to the baby."
But nine o'clock and ten went by, and only the storm outside came down from the hills to the house.
Hour after hour the lamp was burning in the window as a beacon for the traveller; hour after hour Miss Dennihan watched the fever and the weary little fellow in its toils. At half-past ten the blacksmith, the carpenter, and Kew came, Tintoretto, the pup, coldly trembling, at their heels. Jim was not yet back, and the rough men made no concealment of their worry.
"Not home?" said Webber. "Out in the hills—in this?"
"You don't s'pose mebbe he's lost?" inquired the carpenter.
"No, Jim knows his mountains," replied the smith, "but any man could fall and break his leg or somethin'."
"I wisht he'd come," said Miss Doc. "I wisht that he was home."
The three men waited near the house for half an hour more, but in vain. It was then within an hour of midnight. Slowly, at last, they turned away, but had gone no more than half a dozen rods when they met the bar-keep, Doc Dennihan, Lufkins the teamster, and four other men of the camp, who were coming to see if Jim had yet returned.