Pow-wow had not barked within hearing of the fort since the evening he had found his little master down there at the foot of the precipice. He had gone and come, hastening back when he went, lingering when he came--a silent, sad and thoughtful dog. By some inscrutable operation of instinct he had soon discovered that the errands which led Ben and Bertha daily abroad had a reference in some way to the wants of his unfortunate little friend, and that, therefore, it was his bounden duty to lend a helping hand. Accordingly he had divided his time about equally between the two young people; helping the one about the wild herds of the forest, the other about the tame herds of the field. In the morning he would follow the young hunter to the distant lick, and, having acquitted himself in the chase, with his wonted address, he would hasten back to the fort, leaving his companion to follow at that plodding pace peculiar to two-footed animals, and so irksome to dogs, to accommodate themselves to which they must needs trot out, on a magnified scale, the ground plan of a straggling worm fence, with wide digression to right and left; now to sniff at a stump, then to bark down a sinkhole. In the afternoon he would accompany Bertha to the bluegrass glades, where he would take her charge so completely upon himself as to leave her nothing to do but clamber up the hill for a fresh culling of flowers, then follow him, as homeward he drove the cows. When not occupied thus, he would station himself on the porch at the door of the sick room, looking up wistfully into every face that passed him, in the poor, dumb, asking way, which so endears a dog to us when the shadow of death is on our home. He had never ventured to intrude himself into the house, but now that he was called, the grateful look and humble alertness with which he answered the summons testified how earnestly he had wished to do all along. Setting his feet as carefully on the floor as were he shod with heavy shoes, that, too, without a warning whisper in the ear from Ben's mother, he slowly walked up to the bedside and softly ran his huge head under the little hand, so white and wan, extended to greet and caress him. Pow-wow licked the hand in the dear old way, and the familiar sensation helped, not a little, to reassure the boy of his own identity and make him more present to the state of things around him. And it was strange how much more natural his voice and manner became the moment he began speaking to his old play-fellow; though what he spoke was hardly less fantastic or more coherent than the greater part of what he had spoken already.