. Thus they stood for a second only.
Brodie lifted his hands--weak hands rising slowly, slowly--uncertainly.
King saw him through a gathering mist; Brodie opened his mouth to draw
in great sobbing breaths of air. King, the primal rage upon him, saw the
great double teeth bared, and thought that his enemy was laughing at
him. It was King who gathered himself first and struck first. All of the
will he had, all of the endurance left in his battered body, all of the
strength God gave him, he put into that blow. He struck Brodie full in
the face, between the little battered blue eyes. And Brodie fell. He
rose; he got to his knees and sagged up and forward. King's shout then
was to ring through Gloria's memory for days to come; he bore down on
Swen Brodie, caught him about the great body, lifted him clear of the
floor and hurled him downward. Brodie struck heavily, his head against
the rocks. And where he fell he lay--stunned or dead.

"Come," said King to Gloria. "Come quick."

He turned toward the cave's mouth and with one hand began to drag away
the stones so that they could go out. His other hand was pressed to his
side. His work done, he picked up the rifle at his feet and went out.
Gloria, swaying and stumbling, came after him. Neither spoke a word as
they made a slow way through the snow. King went unsteadily with
dragging feet. They climbed the cliff laboriously. They were in their
cave--it was like home. She dropped down on the fir-boughs, stumbling to
them in the dark.

_Chapter XXXI_

Gloria did not know if she had slept or fainted. When she regained
consciousness, though it was pitch dark and dead still, there was no
first puzzled moment of uncertainty. That last wonderfully glad thought
which had filled brain and heart when she sank down on her fir-boughs
had persisted throughout her moments or hours of unconsciousness,
pervading her subconscious self gloriously, flowering spontaneously in
an awakening mind: Mark King had come back to her in her moment of
peril; he had battled for her like the great-hearted hero that he was,
he had saved her and had brought her home. Back home! She had prayed to
God when utter undoing seemed inevitable, when death had seemed more
desirable than life, and He had answered. He had sent Mark King to her!

She was saved, and though it was cold and dark and still, she felt her
heart singing within her. Having lived through all that she had endured,
having been brought safe