subjects--his adventures, his intentions, his
home at Pine Point; but from his looks it seemed as if his thoughts were
otherwise engaged, and occasionally he started up and paced the floor
hurriedly, while his brows darkened and his broad chest heaved as though
he were struggling with some powerful feeling or passion.

"Could it be," thought March, "that there was some mysterious connection
between Dick and the wounded fur trader?" Not being able to find a
satisfactory reply to the thought, he finally dismissed it, and turned
his attentions altogether towards Mary, whose looks of surprise and
concern showed that she too was puzzled by the behaviour of her adopted
father.

During that night and all the next day the wounded man grew rapidly
worse, and March stayed with him, partly because he felt a strong
interest in and pity for him, and partly because he did not like to
leave to Mary the duty of watching a dying man.

Dick went out during the day in the same excited state, and did not
return till late in the evening. During his absence, the dying man's
mind wandered frequently, and, in order to check this as well as to
comfort him, March read to him from his mother's Bible. At times he
seemed to listen intently to the words that fell from March's lips, but
more frequently he lay in a state apparently of stupor.

"Boy," said he, starting suddenly out of one of those heavy slumbers,
"what's the use of reading the Bible to me? I'm not a Christian, an'
it's too late now--too late!"

"The Bible tells me that `_now_' is God's time. I forget where the
words are, an' I can't find 'em," said March earnestly; "but I _know_
they're in this book. Besides, don't you remember the thief who was
saved when he hung on the cross in a dyin' state?"

The fur trader shook his head slowly, and still muttered, "Too late, too
late."

March now became deeply anxious about the dying man, who seemed to him
like one sinking in the sea, yet refusing to grasp the rope that was
flung to him. He turned over the sacred pages hurriedly to find
appropriate texts, and blamed himself again and again for not having
made himself better acquainted with the Word of God. He also repeated
all he could think of from memory; but still the dying man shook his
head and muttered, "Too late!" Suddenly March bent over him and said--

"Christ is able to save to the _uttermost_ all who come unto God through
Him."

The fur trader looked up in silence