haps urged him.

The morning was a little overcast, and very cold between the gleams of
wintry sunshine. "Good-by, dear wife!" he said, and then as she
remembered afterward came back a dozen yards to kiss her. "I'll not be
long," he said. "The beast's prowling, and if it doesn't get wind of me,
I ought to find it in an hour." He hesitated for a moment. "I'll not be
long," he repeated, and she had an instant's wonder whether he hid from
her the same dread of loneliness that she concealed. Up among the
tumbled rocks he turned, and she was still watching him. "Good-by!" he
cried and waved, and the willow thickets closed about him.

She forced herself to the petty duties of the day, made up the fire from
the pile he had left for her, set water to boil, put the hut in order,
brought out sheets and blankets to air, and set herself to wash up. She
wished she had been able to go with him. The sky cleared presently, and
the low December sun lit all the world about her, but it left her spirit
desolate.

She did not expect him to return until midday, and she sat herself down
on a log before the fire to darn a pair of socks as well as she could.
For a time this unusual occupation held her attention and then her hands
became slow and at last inactive, and she fell into reverie. Thoughts
came quick and fast of her children in England so far away.

What was that? She flashed to her feet.

It seemed to her she had heard the sound of a shot, and a quick, brief
wake of echoes. She looked across the icy waste of the river, and then
up the tangled slopes of the mountain. Her heart was beating fast. It
must have been up there, and no doubt Trafford had killed his beast.
Some shadow of doubt she would not admit crossed that obvious
suggestion. The wilderness was making her as nervously responsive as a
creature of the wild.

There came a second shot; this time there was no doubt of it. Then the
desolate silence closed about her again.

Marjorie stood for a long time, staring at the shrubby slopes that rose
to the barren rock wilderness of the purple mountain crest. She sighed
deeply at last, and set herself to make up the fire and prepare for the
midday meal. Once, far away across the river, she heard the howl of a
wolf.

Time seemed to pass very slowly that day. Marjorie found herself going
repeatedly to the space between the day tent and the sleeping hut from
which she could see the stunted wood that had swallowed her husband up,