The touch, that would have been reverent to a corpse, was now rough.

He shook the fallen man and shouted.

He raised him to a sitting posture, but finding that, standing as he did upon soft snow, to lift him was impossible, he laid him again in the self-made grave.

That posture at least would be most conducive to the continued motion of the heart.
Standing upon the other side of the body, Courthope's shoe struck upon another hard object which he found to be a case, stolen locked as it was, which contained, no doubt, the other valuables whose loss Madge had first discovered.

The wretch, weighted by a burden in each hand, had apparently missed his way when endeavouring to return to the shed in which he had left his horse, and wandering in circles, perhaps for hours, had evidently succumbed to drink and to cold, caught as in a trap by the unusual violence of the storm.
There was nothing to be done but return to the house for Morin's aid, and, lifting the handles of basket and case in either hand, Courthope doubled back upon his own track, thankful that he had already attained to some skill in snow-shoeing.