u'll forgive me?" she asked brokenly.

"Good Heavens, I wish there was something to forgive--so we'd be a
little more even. But you've accomplished something, Beatrice--and I
don't know what it is yet--I only know you've changed me--and softened
me--as I never dreamed any one in the world could. Now go to sleep."

He turned from her, but the food on the table no longer tempted him. For
a full hour he stood before the ashes of the fire, deeply and
inextricably bewildered with himself, with life, and with all these
thoughts and hopes and regrets that thronged him. He was like ashes now
himself; the fires of his life seemed burned out. The thought recalled
him to the need of cutting fuel for the night's fire.

He might be able to quiet the growing turmoil in his brain when the
still shadows of the spruce closed around him. He seized his axe, then
peered into the cave. Beatrice, worn out by the stress of the hour
before and immensely comforted by Ben's words, was already deeply
asleep. His rifle leaned against the wall of the cavern, and he put it
in the hollow of his arm. It was not that he feared Beatrice would
attempt to procure it. The act was mostly habit, combined with the fact
that their supply of meat was all but exhausted and he did not wish to
miss any opportunity for big game.

The forest was particularly gloomy to-day. Its shadows lay deep. And
this was not merely the result of his own darkened outlook: glancing up,
he saw that clouds were gathering in the sky. They would need fuel in
plenty to keep the fire bright to-night. Evidently rain was
impending,--one of those cold, steady downpours that are disliked so
cordially by the folk of the upper Selkirks.

He went a full two hundred yards before he found a tree to his liking.
It was a tough spruce of medium height and just at the edge of the
stream. He laid his rifle down, leaning it against a fallen log; then
began his work.

It was an awkward place to stand; but he gave no thought to it. His mind
dwelt steadily on the events in the cavern of the hour before; the
girl's remorse in the instant that she had him at her mercy and the
example it set for him. The blade bit into the wood with slow
encroachments. Perhaps the expenditure of brute energy in swinging the
axe would relieve his pent-up feelings.

He was not watching his work. His blows struck true from habit. Now the
tree was half-severed: it was time to cut on the opposite side. Suddenly
his axe cr