ediately go
back.

But Garth could not trust the breed unreservedly, and unceasing
vigilance was his portion. He had little enough sleep before, and now he
strove to do without it altogether. For three days and three nights he
did not close his eyes. On the fourth day, warned by his tortured,
wavering brain that it must be either sleep or madness, he took his fate
in his hands and lay down on top of the cache, with his gun beside him.

He was unconscious for nearly twelve hours. When he awoke it was to find
Rina's eyes fixed upon him strangely. He sprang up, and she turned away
her head. He could not read that expression--still he had lain there at
her mercy and she had spared him. Neither had she liberated Mabyn from
the island, for Garth could see him moving about. He began to hope that
his arguments had real weight with the breed; and little by little,
under pressure of his great need, he began to trust her.

But when the dread promontory was weathered at last, and Natalie, a
wraith of her blooming self, awoke in her right senses, Rina changed
again, resuming her old sullen, moody self; and all his work was undone.
It was clear the unfortunate girl was dragged ceaselessly back and forth
between her new-fledged soul and the old savage impulses of her blood.
She learned to love the irresistible Natalie whom she had snatched back
from death--but she likewise hated her; hated her blindly because Mabyn
loved her; and inconsistently, but naturally, too, hated her because she
despised Mabyn. The same with Garth; over and over she unconsciously
showed she trusted him; but her blood still rebelled because he was
Mabyn's enemy; and he would sometimes find her eyes fixed on him in a
quickly veiled expression of savage, implacable hatred.

On the first day of his imprisonment, Garth, under threat of withholding
supplies, had forced Mabyn to cut down the willows fringing the hither
side of the island; and his movements about his fire and tepee were in
plain view of those on shore. Concealed from him by a tree, Rina would
often sit by the hour, watching him wistfully. "God knows what course
her harried brain pursues!" Garth, observing her, thought--"if she
thinks at all!" One thing was sure: under the strain of continued
separation, her resistance to Mabyn's evil suggestions was gradually
breaking down.

Meanwhile Garth was straining every nerve to complete the shack that was
to be at once their habitation and their fortress.