Dick turned away with a saddened heart; and that night, as he pored over the pages of his Bible, his mind was filled with many thoughts about eternity and the world to come.  He, too, must come to the grave one day, and quit the beautiful prairies and his loved rifle.  It was a sad thought; but while he meditated he thought upon his mother.  “After all,” he murmured, “there must be happiness without the rifle, and youth, and health, and the prairie!  My mother’s happy, yet she don’t shoot, or ride like wild-fire over the plains.”  Then that word which had been sent so sweetly to him through her hand came again to his mind, “My son, give me thine heart;” and as he read God’s Book, he met with the word, “Delight thyself in the Lord, and he shall give thee the desire of thine heart.” “The desire of thine heart” Dick repeated this, and pondered it till he fell asleep.

A misfortune soon after this befell Dick Varley which well-nigh caused him to give way to despair.  For some time past he had been approaching the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains—­those ragged, jagged, mighty hills which run through the whole continent from north to south in a continuous chain, and form, as it were, the backbone of America.  One morning, as he threw the buffalo robe off his shoulders and sat up, he was horrified to find the whole earth covered with a mantle of snow.  We say he was horrified, for this rendered it absolutely impossible any further to trace his companions either by scent or sight.

For some time he sat musing bitterly on his sad fate, while his dog came and laid his head sympathizingly on his arm.

“Ah, pup!” he said, “I know ye’d help me if ye could!  But it’s all up now; there’s no chance of findin’ them—­none!”

To this Crusoe replied by a low whine.  He knew full well that something distressed his master, but he hadn’t yet ascertained what it was.  As something had to be done, Dick put the buffalo robe on his steed, and mounting said, as he was in the habit of doing each morning, “Lead on, pup.”

Crusoe put his nose to the ground and ran forward a few paces, then he returned and ran about snuffing and scraping up the snow.  At last he looked up and uttered a long melancholy howl.

“Ah!  I knowed it,” said Dick, pushing forward.  “Come on, pup; you’ll have to follow now.  Any way we must go on.”

The snow that had fallen was not deep enough to offer the slightest obstruction to their advance.  It was, indeed, only one of those occasional showers common to that part of the country in the late autumn, which season had now crept upon Dick almost before he was aware of it, and he fully expected that it would melt away in a few days.  In this hope he kept steadily advancing, until he found himself in the midst of those rocky fastnesses which divide the waters that flow into the Atlantic from those that flow into the Pacific Ocean.  Still the slight crust of snow lay on the ground, and he had no means of knowing whether he was going in the right direction or not.