Mechanically he looked at the remains and examined the gun and the axe—­Ed had brought out but one of the axes found by the rock with the remains—­and said, “Th’ gun’s not Bob’s.  Th’ axe were his.”

“Th’ gun’s not Bob’s!” exclaimed Mrs. Gray “Th’ clothes is not Bob’s!  Now I knows ’tis not my boy we’ve found.”

“Yes, Mary,” said he broken-heartedly.  “Tis Bob th’ wolves got.  Our poor lad is gone.  No one else could ha’ had his things.”

He and Douglas made a coffin into which the remains were tenderly placed, and it was put upon a high platform near the house, out of reach of animals, there to rest until the spring, when the snow would be gone and it could be buried.

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.  And now the poor remains enclosed in the rough box that rested upon the scaffold outside were all that remained of him.  And that was the end of all the plans that he and the mother had made for their son’s future, of all their hopes and fine pictures.

Mrs. Gray had never seen her husband in so downcast and despondent a mood, and as the days passed she began to worry about him and finally became alarmed.  He had lost all interest in everything, and had a strange, unnatural look in his eyes that she did not like.

One evening she sat down by his aide, and, taking his hand, said: 

“Be a brave man, Richard, and bear up.  Th’ Lard’s never let Bob die so.  That were not Bob as th’ wolves got.  I’m knowin’ our lad’s somewheres alive.  I were dreamin’ last night o’ seem’ he—­an’—­I feels it—­I feels it—­an’ I can’t go agin my feelin’.”