, and resumed his former toil. My
lord stood rooted, and I at my lord's side, fearing I knew not what.

The frost was not yet very deep, and presently the Indian threw aside
his tool, and began to scoop the dirt by handfuls. Then he disengaged a
corner of a buffalo robe; and then I saw hair catch among his fingers:
yet a moment more, and the moon shone on something white. A while
Secundra crouched upon his knees, scraping with delicate fingers,
breathing with puffed lips; and when he moved aside, I beheld the face
of the Master wholly disengaged. It was deadly white, the eyes closed,
the ears and nostrils plugged, the cheeks fallen, the nose sharp as if
in death; but for all he had lain so many days under the sod, corruption
had not approached him, and (what strangely affected all of us) his lips
and chin were mantled with a swarthy beard.

"My God!" cried Mountain, "he was as smooth as a baby when we laid him
there!"

"They say hair grows upon the dead," observed Sir William; but his voice
was thick and weak.

Secundra paid no heed to our remarks, digging swift as a terrier in the
loose earth. Every moment the form of the Master, swathed in his buffalo
robe, grew more distinct in the bottom of that shallow trough; the moon
shining strong, and the shadows of the standers-by, as they drew forward
and back, falling and flitting over his emergent countenance. The sight
held us with a horror not before experienced. I dared not look my lord
in the face; but for as long as it lasted, I never observed him to draw
breath; and a little in the background one of the men (I know not whom)
burst into a kind of sobbing.

"Now," said Secundra, "you help me lift him out." Of the flight of time
I have no idea; it may have been three hours, and it may have been five,
that the Indian laboured to reanimate his master's body. One thing only
I know, that it was still night, and the moon was not yet set, although
it had sunk low, and now barred the plateau with long shadows, when
Secundra uttered a small cry of satisfaction: and, leaning swiftly
forth, I thought I could myself perceive a change upon that icy
countenance of the unburied. The next moment I beheld his eyelids
flutter; the next they rose entirely, and the week-old corpse looked me
for a moment in the face.

So much display of life I can myself swear to. I have heard from others
that he visibly strove to speak, that his teeth showed in his beard, and
that his brow was conto