he supplies to the cave. By instinct a housekeeper, Beatrice
showed him where to stow the various supplies, what part of the cave was
to be used for provisions, where their cots would be laid, and where to
erect the cooking rack. Shadows had fallen over the land before they
finished the work.

Tired from the hard tramp, yet sustained by a vague excitement neither
of them could name or trace, they began to prepare for the night. Ben
cut boughs as before, placing Beatrice's bed within the portals of the
cave and his own on the grass outside. He cut fuel and made his fire:
Beatrice prepared the evening meal.

The flesh of the cub-bear they had procured that morning would have to
serve them to-night; but more delicious meat could be procured
to-morrow. Ben knew that the white-maned caribou fed in the high park
lands. Beatrice made biscuits and brewed tea; and they ate the simple
food in the firelight. Already the darkness was pressing close upon
them, tremulous, vaguely sinister, inscrutably mysterious.

They had talked gayly at first; but they grew silent as the fire burned
down to coals. A great preoccupation seemed to hold them both. When one
spoke the other started, and word did not immediately come in answer.
Beatrice's despair was not nearly so dominating to-night; and Ben
harbored a secret excitement that was almost happiness.

Its source and origin Ben could not trace. Perhaps it was just relief
that the perilous journey was over. The strain of his hours at the
paddle had been severe; but now they were safe upon the sustaining
earth. Yet this fact alone could hardly have given him such a sense of
security,--an inner comfort new to his adventurous life.

The forest was oppressive to-night, tremulous with the passions of the
Young World; yet he did not respond to it as before. The excitement that
sparkled in the red wine of his veins was not of the chase and death,
and he had difficulty in linking it up with the thoughts of his
forthcoming vengeance. Rather it was a mood that sprang from their
surroundings here, their shelter at the mouth of the cave. He felt
deeply at peace.

The fire blazed warmly at the cavern maw; the wolf stood tense and
still, by means of the secret wireless of the wild fully aware of the
tragic drama, the curtain of which was the dark just fallen; yet Ben's
wild, bitter thoughts of the preceding night did not come readily back
to him. There was a quality here--in the firelight and the hav