The dying man started up with a countenance of ashy paleness, and, leaning on one elbow, gazed earnestly into the youth’s face—“March! can it be my boy?” and fell back with a heavy groan. The bandages had been loosened by the exertion, and blood was pouring freely from his wound. The case admitted of no delay. March hurriedly attempted to stop the flow of the vital stream, assisted by Mary, who had been sitting at the foot of the couch bathed in tears during the foregoing scene.
Just then Dick returned, and, seeing how matters stood, quickly staunched the wound; but his aid came too late. Macgregor, or rather Obadiah Marston, opened his eyes but once after that, and seemed as if he wished to speak. March bent down quickly and put his ear close to his mouth; there was a faint whisper, “God bless you, March, my son,” and then all was still!
March gazed long and breathlessly at the dead countenance; then, looking slowly up in Dick’s face, he said, pointing to the dead man, “My father!” and fell insensible on the couch beside him.
We will pass over the first few days that succeeded the event just narrated, during which poor March Marston went about the wild region in the vicinity of the cave like one in a dream. It may be imagined with what surprise the trappers learned from him the near relationship that existed between himself and the fur trader. They felt and expressed the deepest sympathy with their young comrade, and offered to accompany him when he laid his father in the grave. But Dick had firmly refused to allow the youth to bring the trappers near his abode, so they forbore to press him, and the last sad rites were performed by himself and Dick alone. The grave was made in the centre of a little green vale which lay like an emerald in the heart of that rocky wilderness; and a little wooden cross, with the name and date cut thereon by March, was erected at the head of the low mound to mark the fur trader’s last lonely resting-place. March Marston had never known his father in early life, having been an infant when he deserted his family; and the little that he had seen of him at the Mountain Fort, and amid the wild scenes of the Rocky Mountains, had not made a favourable impression on him. But, now that he was gone, the natural instinct of affection arose within his breast. He called to remembrance the last few and sad hours which he had spent by his parent’s dying bed. He thought of their last few words on the momentous concerns of the soul, and of the eagerness with which, at times, the dying man listened to the life-giving Word of God; and the tear of sorrow that fell upon the grave, as he turned to quit that solitary spot, was mingled with a tear of joy and thankfulness that God had brought him there to pour words of comfort and hope into his dying father’s ear.
That night he spent in the cave with Dick; he felt indisposed to join his old comrades just then. The grave tenderness of his eccentric friend, and the sympathy of little Mary, were more congenial to him.
“March,” said Dick in a low, sad tone, as they sat beside the fire, “that funeral reminds me o’ my friend I told ye of once. It’s a lonesome grave his, with nought but a wooden cross to mark it.”
“Had you known him long, Dick?”
“No, not long. He left the settlement in a huff—bein’, I b’lieve, crossed in love, as I told ye.”
Dick paused, and clasping both hands over his knee, gazed with a look of mingled sternness and sorrow at the glowing fire.
“Did ye ever,” he resumed abruptly, “hear o’ a feller called Louis, who once lived at Pine Point—before ye was born, lad; did ye ever hear yer mother speak of him?”