Presently Dick moved--up went the ears again, and Crusoe came, in military parlance, "to the position of attention!" At last supper was ready and they began.
Dick had purposely kept the dog's supper back from him, in order that they might eat it in company.

And between every bite and sup that Dick took, he gave a bite--but not a sup--to Crusoe.

Thus lovingly they ate together; and when Dick lay that night under the willow branches, looking up through them at the stars, with his feet to the fire and Crusoe close along his side, he thought it the best and sweetest supper he ever ate, and the happiest evening he ever spent--so wonderfully do circumstances modify our notions of felicity.
Two weeks after this "Richard was himself again." The muscles were springy, and the blood coursed fast and free, as was its wont.

Only a slight, and, perhaps, salutary feeling of weakness remained, to remind him that young muscles might again become more helpless than those of an aged man or a child.
Dick had left his encampment a week ago, and was now advancing by rapid stages towards the Rocky Mountains, closely following the trail of his lost comrades, which he had no difficulty in finding and keeping now that Crusoe was with him.

The skin of the buffalo that he had killed was now strapped to his shoulders, and the skin of another animal that he had shot a few days after was cut up into a long line and slung in a coil round his neck.