Philip looked brighter for the draft of water, but he only smiled in reply. The sun was warm outside, but the act of drinking, while it had greatly revived and encouraged Coleman and Bromley, had so chilled their starved bodies that they put on their overcoats and buttoned them up to the throat. They could do no more in the way of calling for help than they had already done. Men had died of starvation before, and it might be their fate to perish of hunger, but they had a strong faith that the fires they had built for two nights on this uninhabited mountain would bring some one to their relief. They regretted now that the reading of the abolition books had influenced them to delay so long their appeal for help. To reach them their rescuers must fell one or more of the tall pines across the bridgeless gorge, but they were too weak to go down the ladders, and what wind there was blew across the mountain in the direction of the gorge, so that they would not be able to hear the sound of an ax a mile away. Time had never dragged so slowly before. The sun lay in at the open door, and by the marks they had made on the floor, as well as by the shadows cast by the trees outside, they could judge closely of the hour. They could hardly believe that it was only ten o'clock in the morning, when it seemed as if they had already passed a whole day in vain hope of relief. It was such a terrible thing to await starvation in the oppressive stillness of the mountain, that Bromley, almost desperate with listening, went to the branch and hung the bucket on the arm of the old Slow-John, which presently began to pound and splash in its measured way. Dismal as the sound was, it gave them something to count, and relieved their tired ears of the monotonous flapping of the flag and of the rustling of the barren corn-stalks. They talked of the old man who had died alone on the other plateau. He, too, might have died of starvation. There were no signs of food in the deserted house when they had discovered it. They had never thought of it before, but his cunning agent might have been a villain after all. He might have grown weary at last of lugging casks up the mountain by moonlight, and getting the old man's gold by slow doles. He must have had some knowledge of the treasure for which he dug so persistently afterward, and in his greed to possess it he might have deliberately starved the old abolitionist. They thought of Hezekiah Wallstow burning beacon-fires in his extremity, when there was a good bridge to connect the mountain-top with the valley, and yet he was left to die alone. The thought was not encouraging to Coleman and Bromley in their weakened, nervous condition, and tended to make them more than ever distrustful of the natives to whom they had appealed.