Wicked No. 7 [pp. 505-523]

1884.] WICKED No. 7. 521
had tossed your body out of sight. I spent half an hour looking
for you. I was very, very uneasy.
In the afternoon they all paid a visit to Father Malone, the
parish priest, who made an excellent impression on Shippen, and
the latter promised that this should not be his last visit to the
reverend gentleman. Then, after having assisted at Vespers, Jim
Eider, Shippen, and the girls took the train for Casey; for the
engineer had obtained a short holiday, and Jim was determined
to give him a taste of prairie life in midwinter.
It was, however, with heavy hearts that they reached the
comfortable log-house, which stood in the midst of a clump of
locust-trees five miles from the settlemeuf; for they had not
been able to obtain any tidings of Dick Barnes, dead or alive,
although scores of willing men had spent the day looking for
him; and it was the general opinion that after falling off the
engine he had been devoured by wolves, great numbers of whom
had come down from Minnesota since the bitter cold weather
had set in.
But life, we know, is full of surprises; and imagine the feelings of the mournful party when on entering the house they discovered Barnes lying on the floor near a blazing fire. An immense buffalo-robe was wrapped around him, and he was chatting
with Jim Elder's hired man, a jovial Irishman, who had proved
indeed the tenderest of nurses. The meeting betwe~n Shippen
and his fireman cannot be described. The former, in the ecstasy
of his joy, came near dropping little Bobby; he might have let
him fall had not Lizzie Elder caught the child in her arms, while
the engineer bent down and rubbed his shaggy beard over
Barnes' face, as if grinning Dick had been a baby too.
"Tim Murphy found me up to my neck in a snow-drift," said
Barnes. "I was half dead when he hauled me out and carried
me here in a sleigh. And he's been rubbing the skin off my
bones ever since to brin~ back the circulation; and now he is
smothering me in this buffalo.robe." "Well,`twas mighty lucky
I was out at that lonesome hour," answered Tim. "Only that [
had been driving Mr. Elder and Miss Helen to Casey, where
they w an ted to get aboard a train so as to be in Des Moines in
time for first Mass, I'd never have liad the good fortune to save
your life." "And wasn't I glad! Didn't I' holier' when I saw a
sleigh coming toward me! " continued Barnes.
"And didn't I at first think it was the Old Boy peeping up
out of a snow-bank at me?" said Tim, with a broad grin. "But
then I had always associated the divil wid fire; and so in a