he larger ones were cut away with blows
incredibly strong and accurate. How and by what might she did not know,
but almost at once the man's body was free except for the tree trunk
that wedged him against a dead log toward which he had leaped for
shelter.

She seemed powerless to move it. Her shoulders surged against it in
vain. A desperate frenzy seized her, but she fought it remorselessly
down. Her self-discipline must not break yet. Seeing that she could not
move the tree itself, she thrust with all her power against the dead log
beside which Ben lay. In a moment she had rolled it aside.

Then for the first time she went to her knees beside the prone form.
Ben was free of the imprisoning limbs, but was his soul already free of
the stalwart body broken among the broken boughs? She had to know this
first; further effort was unavailing until she knew this. Her hand stole
over his face.

She found no reassuring warmth. It was wet with the rain, cold to the
touch. His hair was wet too, and matted from some dreadful wound in the
scalp. Very softly she felt along the skull for some dreadful fracture
that might have caused instant death; but the descending trunk had
missed his head, at least. Very gently she shook him by the shoulders.

Her stern self-control gave way a little now. The strain had been too
much for human nerves to bear. She gathered him into her arms, still
without sobbing, but the hot tears dropped on to his face.

"Speak to me, Ben," she said quietly. The wind caught her words and
whisked them away; and the rain played its unhappy music in the tree
foliage; but Ben made no answer. "Speak to me," she repeated, her tone
lifting. "My man, my baby--tell me you're not dead!"

Dead! Was that it--struck to the earth like the caribou that fell before
his rifle? And in that weird, dark instant a light far more bright than
that the flickering pine knots cast so dim and strange over the scene
beamed forth from the altar flame of her own soul. It was only the light
of knowledge, not of hope, but it transfigured her none the less.

All at once she knew why she had hurled the poisoned cup from his hand,
even though her father's life might be the price of her weakness. She
understood, now, why these long weeks had been a delight rather than a
torment; why her fears for him had gone so straight to her heart. She
pressed his battered head tight against her breast.

"My love, my love," she crooned in his ear, pressin