He peered in
every direction; but there was no sign of a camp, nothing to show that
any human foot before his had disturbed the solitude of this
mountain-side, and no further marks on the ground, save one impression
on a bed of earth at his feet where some animal had lately lain.
The disappointment was stupefying.
At last a fog of terror settled down upon him,--a fog which blotted out
every sight and sound, blotted out even his own thoughts, all except
one, which, like a danger-signal in a mist, kept booming through his
brain: "Lost! Lost!"
By and by he was sitting on the piled-up stones and dirt of the slide;
but he had no remembrance of getting to this resting-place, for he was
still befogged.
Something snorted close to his right ear,--loud snort, which banished
stupor, and set his pulses jumping. It was a deer, a beautiful doe in a
coat of reddish-drab, matching the autumnal tints of the forest,
wherever maples, birches, and cedars mingled with the evergreens. She
had bounded upon him suddenly from behind a dead spruce and a mound of
earth.
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