more than
a week, Beatrice was forbidden to enter a certain covert just beyond the
glade lest she should prematurely discover an even greater wonder that
Ben, in off hours, was preparing for a surprise.

From time to time she heard him busily at work, the ring of his axe and
his gay whistling as he whittled bolts of wood; but other than that it
concerned the grizzly skin she had not the least idea of his task. But
the work was completed at last, and then came two days of rather
significant silence,--quite incomprehensible to the girl. She was at a
loss why Ben did not reveal his treasure.

But one morning she missed the familiar sounds of his fire-building,
usually his first work on wakening. The very fact of their absence
startled her wide-awake, while otherwise she would have perhaps slept
late into the morning. Ben had seemingly vanished into the heavy timber
across the glade.

Presently she heard him muttering and grunting as he moved some heavy
object to the door of the cave. Boyishly, he could not wait for the
usual late hour when she wakened. He made a wholly unnecessary amount of
noise as he built the fire. Then he thrust his lean head into the cavern
opening.

"I hope I haven't waked you up?" he said.

The girl smiled secretly. "I wanted to wake up, anyway--to-day."

"I wish you'd get up and come and look at something ugly I've got just
outside the door."

She hurried into her outer garments, and in a moment appeared. It was
ugly, certainly, the object that he had fashioned with such tireless
toil: not fitted at all for a stylish city home; yet the girl, for one
short instant, stopped breathing. It was a hammock, suspended on a stout
frame, to take the place of her tree-bough bed on the cave floor. He had
used the grizzly skin, hanging it with unbreakable sinew, and fashioning
it in such a manner that folds of the hide could be turned over her on
cold nights. For a moment she gazed, very earnestly, into the rugged,
homely, raw-boned face of her companion.

Beatrice was deeply and inexplicably sobered, yet a curious happiness
took swift possession of her heart. Reading the gratitude in her eyes,
Ben's lips broke into a radiant smile.

"I guess you've forgotten what day it is," he said.

"Of course. I hardly know the month."

"I've notched each day, you know. And maybe you've forgotten--on the
ride out from Snowy Gulch--we talked of birthdays. To-day is yours."

She stared at him in genuine astonis