fine dinner, and
leave something for to-morrow."

"Thank you, Philip!" she said gratefully. "You make me feel as if I
were not such a failure after all."

"If you'll trust me with the knife," he said in a tone that took some
of the edge off her satisfaction, "I'll clean him for you."

She gave him the knife reluctantly, and did not leave his side until
he had finished cleaning and cutting up the rabbit, when he handed the
knife back to her with a gesture that made her blush again. Two things
she did not know: that he had a knife in his pocket much better suited
to his secret purpose; and that his purpose was a purpose no longer.
But even he was not yet aware of this last.

It was not the next day, but the third, when the rabbit had been eaten
to the bone, and the pangs of hunger prodded her, that Marion restored
herself in her own eyes. In the edge of the forest, not more than two
miles from the camp, she detected a mere brown patch in the browning
bush. This time she did not forget her rifle. The brown patch moved
just as she pulled the trigger; but when she reached the spot, in a
fever of anxiety, she fairly shrieked to the wilderness. For there in
the grass, still jerking spasmodically in its death agony, lay a doe,
a larger one than that she had seen in the glade. No more "one a day
for twenty-seven days!"

What followed haunted her dreams for many nights thereafter--a
repulsive and sickening ordeal. She had seen Huntington do it, but
then she had been able to turn her face away; and her hands--But
necessity, responsibility, and pride, and perhaps some primitive
instinct also, nerved her to the task. And she staggered back to camp,
and stood before Philip, white and trembling, but triumphant.

"Take a drink of whisky!" ordered Haig sharply.

She obeyed him, gulping down the last of the precious contents of her
flask.

"It's down there--covered with leaves!" she gasped out at length.
"Will anything--disturb it before I can--take Tuesday and the rope?"

"Do you mean you've cleaned the whole deer?" he asked curiously.

She nodded, still shuddering.

"Well, you're a brick!" he said heartily. Then he added: "I thought
perhaps a bobcat had stolen your--rabbit."

She laughed with him, and then was off with Tuesday to bring her
quarry home. She was not strong enough to lift and fasten the carcass
on the horse's back; but the route was through clean grass along the
cliff, and Tuesday made short work of that, w