I pull’d some more fronds of the bracken to cover them both. She thank’d me, and offer’d to relieve me in my watch: which I refus’d. And indeed, by lying down I should have caught my death, very likely. The big flakes drifted down between the pines: till, as the moon paled, the ground about me was carpeted all in white, with the foliage black as ink above it. Time after time, as I tramp’d to and fro, I paus’d to brush the fresh-forming heap from the sleepers’ coverlet, and shake it gently from the tresses of the girl’s hair. The old man’s face was covered completely by the buff-coat: but his breathing was calm and regular as any child’s. Day dawn’d. Awaking Mistress Delia, I ask’d her to keep watch for a time, while I went off to explore. She crept out from her bed with a little shiver of disgust. “Run about,” I advis’d, “and keep the blood stirring.” She nodded: and looking back, as I strode down the hill, I saw her moving about quickly, swinging her arms, and only pausing to wave a hand to me for goodspeed. * * * * * ’Twas an hour before I return’d: and plenty I had to tell. Only at the entrance to the dingle the words failed from off my tongue. The old gentleman lay as he had lain throughout the night. But the bracken had been toss’d aside, and the girl was kneeling over him. I drew near, my step not arousing her. Sir Deakin’s face was pale and calm: but on the snow that had gather’d by his head, lay a red streak of blood. ’Twas from his lungs, and he was quite dead. CHAPTER VII. I FIND A COMRADE. But I must go back a little and tell you what befell in my expedition. I had scarce trudged out of sight of my friends, down the hill, when it struck me that my footprints in the snow were in the last degree dangerous to them, and might lead Settle and his crew straight to the dingle. Here was a fix. I stood for some minutes nonpluss’d, when above the stillness of the wood (for the wind had dropp’d) a faint sound as of running water caught my ear, and help’d me to an idea. The sound seem’d to come from my left. Turning aside I made across the hill toward it, and after two hundred paces or so came on a tiny brook, not two feet across, that gush’d down the slope with a quite considerable chatter and impatience. The bed of it was mainly earth, with here and there a large stone or root to catch the toe: so that, as I stepped into the water and began to thread my way down between the banks of snow, ’twas necessary to look carefully to my steps. Here and there the brook fetch’d a leap down a sharper declivity, or shot over a hanging stone: but, save for the wetting I took in these places, my progress was easy enough. I must have waded in this manner for half a mile, keeping the least possible noise, when at an angle ahead I spied a clearing among the pines, and to the right of the stream, on the very verge, a hut of logs standing, with a wood rick behind it.