ls; something tireless and hard and as determined as fate
itself.

They had made their scanty suppers; after it both were hungry. They had
been hungry thus for four days. There remained coffee and sugar enough
for another half-dozen meagre meals; here the affluence ended. The bacon
was down to a piece of fat two inches thick and seven inches long; there
was bacon grease a couple of inches deep in a tomato-can; there was a
teacup of flour; there was one small tin of sardines and a smaller one
of devilled meat. To-day they were hungry, to-morrow they would be a
great deal hungrier, the next day they would begin to starve.... King
got up and went out, down the cliffs in the dark, for a last load of
wood. When he came back she was lying on her bed, her face from the
light. He stood a moment looking at her. Then for the last time he spoke
to her:

"If I am long gone, you understand why. It would be best to save food
all you can; not to stir about much, since exercise means burning up
more strength, which must be renewed and by still more food.... There is
not a chance in a thousand now that those men will find this place; if
they do, there is not a chance in another thousand that they will find
the middle cave. You will be safe enough.... And, if I do not get back
to-morrow, you will know that within three days more, or four at most,
there will be a party in here to bring you out."

_Chapter XXVII_

Gloria awoke with a start. She had not heard King go, yet she knew that
she was alone in the cave. Alone! She sat up, clutching her blankets
about her. Objects all around her were plunged into darkness, but where
the canvas let in the morning she saw a patch of drear, chill light.
Full morning. Then by now Mark King was far away.

Oh, the pitiless loneliness of the world as she sat there in the gloom
of the cavern, her heart as cheerless as the drear light creeping in, as
cold as the dead charred sticks where last night's fire had burnt itself
out. And, oh, the terrible, merciless silence about her. She sat plunged
into a despondency beyond the bourne of tears, a slim, white-bodied,
gaunt-eyed girl crushed, beaten by a relentless destiny, lost to the
world, shut in between two terrors--the black unknown of the deeper
cavern, the white menace of a waste wilderness. And far more than pinch
of cold or bite of hunger was her utter solitude unbearable.

She sprang up and built a fire. Less for the warmth, though she was