“Ay, I’ve often bin to the Mountain Fort and seed him there. See, he’s comin’ to. Put that torch more behind me, lad. It’ll be better for him not to see me.”
As he spoke the wounded man sighed faintly. Opening his eyes, he said, “Where am I?”
“Speak to him,” whispered Dick, looking over his shoulder at March, who advanced, and, kneeling at the side of the couch, said—
“You’re all right, Mr Macgregor. I’ve brought you to the hunter’s home. He’ll dress your wound and take care of you, so make your mind easy. But you’ll have to keep quiet. You’ve lost much blood.”
The fur trader turned round and seemed to fall asleep, while Dick bound his wound, and then, leaving him to rest, he and March returned to the other cave.
During that night Dick seemed in an unaccountably excited state. Sometimes he sat down by the fire and talked with March in an absent manner on all kinds of subjects—his adventures, his intentions, his home at Pine Point; but from his looks it seemed as if his thoughts were otherwise engaged, and occasionally he started up and paced the floor hurriedly, while his brows darkened and his broad chest heaved as though he were struggling with some powerful feeling or passion.
“Could it be,” thought March, “that there was some mysterious connection between Dick and the wounded fur trader?” Not being able to find a satisfactory reply to the thought, he finally dismissed it, and turned his attentions altogether towards Mary, whose looks of surprise and concern showed that she too was puzzled by the behaviour of her adopted father.
During that night and all the next day the wounded man grew rapidly worse, and March stayed with him, partly because he felt a strong interest in and pity for him, and partly because he did not like to leave to Mary the duty of watching a dying man.
Dick went out during the day in the same excited state, and did not return till late in the evening. During his absence, the dying man’s mind wandered frequently, and, in order to check this as well as to comfort him, March read to him from his mother’s Bible. At times he seemed to listen intently to the words that fell from March’s lips, but more frequently he lay in a state apparently of stupor.
“Boy,” said he, starting suddenly out of one of those heavy slumbers, “what’s the use of reading the Bible to me? I’m not a Christian, an’ it’s too late now—too late!”