s incomprehensible to herself as to Ben.

Their diet was not so simple now. Of course their flour and sugar and
rice, and the meat that they took in the chase furnished the body of
their meals, and without these things they could not live; but Beatrice
was a woods child, and she knew how to find manna in the wilderness.
Almost every morning she ventured out into the still, dew-wet forest,
and nearly always she came in with some dainty for their table. She
gathered watercress in the still pools and she knew a dozen ways to
serve it. Sometimes she made a dressing out of animal oil, beaten to a
cream; and it was better than lettuce salad. Other tender plant tops
were used as a garnish and as greens, and many and varied were the
edible roots that supplied their increasing desire for fresh vegetables.

Sometimes she found wocus in the marsh--the plant formerly in such
demand by the Indians--and by patient experiment she learned how to
prepare it for the table. Washing the plant carefully she would pound it
into paste that could be used as the base for a nutty and delicious
bread. Other roots were baked in ashes or served fried in animal fat,
and once or twice she found patches of wild strawberries, ripening on
the slopes.

This was living! They plucked the sweet, juicy berries from the vines;
they served as dessert and were also used in the fashioning of delicious
puddings with rice and sugar. Several times she found certain treasures
laid by for winter use by the squirrels or the digging people--and
perfectly preserved nuts and acorns, The latter, parched over coals,
became one of the staples of their diet.

She gathered leaves of the red weed and dried them for tea. She searched
out the nests of the grouse and robbed them of their eggs; and always
high celebration in the cave followed such a find as this. Fried eggs,
boiled eggs, poached eggs tickled their palates for mornings to come.
And she traced down, one memorable day when their sugar was all but
gone, a tree that the wild bees had stored with honey.

In the way of meat they had not only caribou, but the tender veal of
moose and all manner of northern small game. Ben did not, however, spend
rifle cartridges in reckless shooting. When at last his enemies came
filing down through the beaver meadow he had no desire to be left with a
half-empty gun. He had never fired this more powerful weapon since he
had felled their first caribou. The moose calves and all the smal