.

In the flaring light his eyes made a swift but careful appraisal of his
surroundings. The girl's cot had not been slept in; and to his great
amazement he saw that their food supplies were spent. Still holding to
the wall he walked to the cave mouth.

Instantly his keen eyes saw the far-off gleam of the camp fire on the
distant margin of the lake. For all that the hour was late, it burned
high and bright. He watched it, vaguely conscious of the insidious
advance of a ghastly fear. Beatrice was his ally now--if these weeks had
sent home one fact to him it was this--and her absence might easily
indicate that she was helpless in the enemy's hands. The thing suggested
ugly possibilities. Yet he could not aid her. He could scarcely walk;
even the knife that he wore at his belt was missing, probably carried by
Beatrice when she gathered roots in the woods.

But presently all questions as to his course were settled for him. His
straining ear caught the faintest, almost imperceptible vibration in the
air--a soundwave so dim and obscure that it seemed impossible that the
human mind could interpret it--but Ben recognized it in a flash. In some
great trouble and horror, in the sullen light of that distant camp fire,
Beatrice had screamed for aid.

Only by the grace of the Red Gods had he heard the sound at all. Except
for the fact that the half-mile intervening was as still as death, and
that half the way the sound sped over water, he couldn't have hoped to
perceive it. If the wind had blown elsewhere than straight toward him
from the enemy camp, or if his marvelous sense of hearing had been less
acute, the result would have been the same; and there could have been no
answer from this dark man at the cave mouth who stood so tense and
still. Finally, by instinct as much as by conscious intelligence, he
identified the sound, marked it as a reality rather than a fancy, and
read the tragic need behind it. Swiftly he started down the glade toward
her.

Yet in a moment he knew that unless he conserved his strength he could
not hope to make a fourth of the distance. At the first steps he swayed,
half staggering. He had paid the price for his weeks of illness and his
injuries. If he had been in a sick room, under a physician's care, he
would have believed it impossible to walk unsupported across the room.
But need is the mother of strength, and this was the test. Besides, he
had had several days of convalescence that had put back i