epleted. They could not make the
march without food. Days and nights overtook her with her triumph as far
distant as ever. The moment of opportunity she had watched for, in which
she might seize the cartridge belt and destroy it, had never come to
pass. The plans she had made while the night lay soft and mysterious in
the solitudes had all come to nothing. He had never, as she had hoped,
removed his belt and forgotten to replace it, nor had his slumber ever
been so deep that she could steal it from him.

His own triumph surely was almost at hand. Surely his pursuers had
almost overtaken him. The stores had already fallen far below the margin
of safety for the long journey home. The thought was with her, and she
was desperate one long, warm afternoon as she searched for roots and
berries in the forest. Edible plants were ever more hard to find, these
past days; but what there were she gathered almost automatically,
herself lost in a deep preoccupation. And all at once her hand reached
toward a little vine of black berries, each with a green tuft at the
end, not unlike gooseberries in southern gardens.

As if by instinct, hardly aware of the motion, she withdrew her hand.
She knew this vine. She was enough of a forester never to mistake it.
It was the deadly nightshade, and a handful of the berries spelt death.
She started to look elsewhere.

But presently she paused, arrested by an idea so engrossing and yet so
terrible that her heart seemed to pause in her breast. Had any rules
been laid down for her to follow in her war with Ben? Was she to
consider methods at such a time as this? Was she not a woods girl,--a
woman, not a child, trained and tutored in the savage code of the wild
that knows no ethics other than might, whether might of arm or craft, of
brain or fell singleness of purpose? Should she consider ethics now?

Her father's life was in imminent danger. Another day might find him
stretched lifeless before her. Ben had not hesitated to use every weapon
in his power; she should not hesitate now. Ben had made his war; she
would wage it by his own code.

For a moment she stood almost without outward motion, intrigued by the
possibilities of this little handful of berries. She shuddered once,
nervously, but there was no further impulse of remorse. Perhaps she
trembled slightly; and her eyes were simply depthless shadows under her
brows.

They were so little, seemingly so inoffensive: these dark berries in the