oo plainly was her reason strangely misshapen,
stood in silence, her great muscular body looming high above Judith's,
a giant of a woman, bigger than Trevors even, broad and heavy, her
forearms thick and corded, her bare throat like the bull neck of a
prize-fighter.

"I will know, I will know," she said, her eyes filled with cunning, her
voice a strange singsong oddly at variance with the coarse bigness of
her body. "Oh, no, she will never escape from me again."

"I will have a man on the ledge outside night and day," went on
Trevors. "But we cannot be so sure of others as we are of ourselves,
Ruth. You know that, don't you?"

"Oh, yes, I know," she answered quickly. As she spoke she suddenly
shot out her long arm so that her great, bony hand fastened like a big
claw on the girl's shoulder. "I have got her again! She is mine, all
mine. Oh, I will keep her well."

In a little while Trevors left. He had not returned. Mad Ruth, still
gripping Judith's shoulder, half led her, half thrust her farther back
in the cavern. Judith made no resistance. Always, even when terror
was uppermost she held one thought in mind: "If I can make them think
me a little fool and a weakling, my chance may come after a while."

As the two women passed around a bend in the sinuous tunnel-like cave,
the faint rays of the lantern they had left behind them died out, and
heavy darkness shut them in. Judith could barely make out the huge
form towering over her. But Ruth, whether her eyes were like a cat's
and accustomed to this sombre place, or whether a hand on a rock wall
or a foot on the uneven floor under her told her which way to go, moved
on without hesitation. Judith estimated roughly that they had come
fifty yards from the outside ledge in front of the cave when she was
pushed down and felt the rude bed of fir-boughs under her.

"So," grunted the woman, for the first time removing her hard hand from
the girl's shoulder, "I've got you again, my pretty. And this time you
don't play any more little tricks on your old mother."

She was gone swiftly, all but silently, through the gloom, her form
vaguely outlined against the lantern's glimmer, to bring the food and
water which she had set down when she came in. Judith drank and ate.

It was only little by little, in fragments which she obtained during
the slow days which followed, that she came to understand Trevors's
scheme. And the scheme was in keeping with the man; so fa