When three or four men had descended he bade
them follow him, saying, weakly and disjointedly, but persistently: "My
boy--my son Robert--came home--came home at last--here with Flip--both
of them--come and see!"
He had reached a little niche or nest in the hillside, and stopped, and
suddenly drew aside a blanket. Beneath it, side by side, lay Flip and
Lance, dead, with their cold hands clasped in each other's.
"Suffocated!" said two or three, turning with horror toward the broken
up and still smouldering pit.
"Asleep!" said the old man. "Asleep! I've seen 'em lying that way when
they were babies together. Don't tell me! Don't say I don't know my own
flesh and blood! So! so! So, my pretty ones!" He stooped and kissed
them. Then, drawing the blanket over them gently, he rose and said
softly, "Good night!"
FOUND AT BLAZING STAR.
The rain had only ceased with the gray streaks of morning at Blazing
Star, and the settlement awoke to a moral sense of cleanliness, and the
finding of forgotten knives, tin cups, and smaller camp utensils, where
the heavy showers had washed away the debris and dust heaps before the
cabin-doors.
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