For a whole week after this sad duty was performed the father sat by
the cabin stove and brooded, a broken-hearted, dispirited counterpart
of what he had been at the Christmas time. It was the man's nature to
be silent in seasons of misfortune. During the previous year, when
luck had been so against him, this characteristic of silent brooding
had shown itself markedly, but then he did not remain in the house and
neglect his work as he did now. He seemed to have lost all heart and
all ambition. He scarcely troubled to feed the dogs, and the few tasks
that he did perform were evidently irksome and unpleasant to him, as
things that interfered with his reveries.
From morning until night Richard Gray nursed the grief in his bosom,
but never referred to the tragedy unless it was first mentioned by
another; and at such times he said as little as possible about it,
answering questions briefly, offering nothing himself, and plainly
showing that he did not wish to converse upon the subject.
Over and over again he reviewed to himself every phase of Bob's life,
from the time when, a wee lad, Bob climbed on his knee of an evening
to beg for stories of bear hunts, and great gray wolves that harried
the hunters, and how the animals were captured on the trail; and
through the years into which the little lad grew into youth and
approached manhood, down to the day that he left home, looking so
noble and stalwart, to brave, for the sake of those he loved, the
unknown dangers that lurked in the rude, wild wastes beyond the line
of blue mysterious hills to the northward.
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