ting
of her own heart, something stronger, more stubborn, than the Gloria of
another day kept her silent.

And still he had not finished.

"Before I go I am going to do all that I can to wall up the mouth of the
cave. It will make it warmer in here and--and there will be less danger
of any one finding the place. You threatened once to go to those other
men; _no matter what happens, you must not do that_. You don't quite
understand what some men are. These happen to be the worst of a bad
crowd that ever got into these mountains. They respect neither God nor
man--nor woman. They are in an ugly mood; they probably have more
bootleg whiskey with them than food; I did not tell you, but I looked in
on their camp and saw one of them, a dope fiend named Benny Rudge, shoot
one of his own friends dead, suspecting him of having stolen a side of
bacon. You would be better dead, too, than in their hands. Never forget
that. They don't know if they'll ever get out of this alive; they are
desperate devils.

"But with the cave walled up, they won't find you. If the worst should
happen and they came here, still you could hide. I'll show you the
place, far back in the cave. You could run there with your blankets and
food; you could stay there, never moving. No man could find you there.
They would see where we had been here, but they would have to decide in
the end that we had gone, both of us.

"I'll bring you plenty of wood; I am going to make a pair of snow-shoes
of a sort for me; I'll make a pair for you. I hope you won't need them."
He ran his hand across his brow but continued in a moment, his voice
unchanged: "I'll go out before daylight in the morning; it will take me
all that is left of to-day to do what must be done first."

He turned then and went about his work. She went back to the place by
the fire, terribly moved, agitated to the depths of her soul, torn this
way and that. But one steady fire burned in her bosom--the newly kindled
white flame of her resentment. Just yonder, where he had hurled it, a
grim reminder, lay the rope.

He brought fragments of rock to the cave's mouth, the biggest he could
find, boulders which he rolled from the further dark, and with which he
struggled mightily as he piled them one on the other. Higher and higher
he built his rude wall, placing the smaller stones at the top. And in
time, after hours of labour, he had hidden the great hole as best he
could, leaving only at the side a way to p