Page:The Indian Drum (1917 original).pdf/364

346 his jacket and felt within his clothes; he was warm—at least he was not frozen within! No; and there seemed some stir of his heart! She tried to lift him, to carry him; then to drag him. But she could not; he fell from her arms into the snow again, and she sat down, pulling him upon her lap and clasping him to her.

She must have aid, she must get him to some house, she must take him out of the terrible cold; but dared she leave him? Might Henry return, if she went away? She arose and looked about. Far up the shore she saw his figure rising and falling with his flight over the rough ice. A sound came to her too, the low, deep reverberation of the Drum beating once more along the shore and in the woods and out upon the lake; and it seemed to her that Henry's figure, in the stumbling steps of its flight, was keeping time to the wild rhythm of that sound. And she stooped to Alan and covered him with her coat, before leaving him; for she feared no longer Henry's return.