r how the knapsack was packed.

And Haig looked across at her dizzily, as if the fumes of the strong
tobacco had gone to his head.

* * * * *

Their situation was still miserable enough, but the Indian contrived
to make it less unendurable. He knew some knacks of cookery that
availed to make their venison and rabbit palatable; and the tea and
coffee cheered them beyond all possibility of expression. No longer
required to toil; with clean underwear; with soap for her blackened
face and hands, Marion recovered her strength, or much of it, with
amazing swiftness. Pete made a rough coat and even a skirt for her of
deerskin. The coat was of double thickness, and very warm indeed, and
so she gave back to Haig the remnant of the leather coat she had been
wearing, which was now needed to cover his ragged corduroy. Then came
moccasins, and better crutches for Haig; and so they settled down with
new courage for what they thought would be a long wait through the
implacable winter.

Haig kept his secret, or supposed he was keeping it. Marion did not
indeed remember how he had taken her in his arms in her delirium;
rather, if there was a faint but insistent recollection of the embrace
it was intangible and unreal. She had dreamed so often of that
longed-for embrace that the reality was inseparable from the imagined.
Nor was she aware of the revelation that had come to Haig, as if a
dazzling light had broken through the walls of the cavern. But though
he might keep his secret he could not conceal from her the change that
had come over him, the tenderness and wonder and humility that had
succeeded his hardness and scepticism and belligerency. She detected
that alteration in every look he gave her, in every movement he made
in waiting upon her, in every tone of his speech, though the words
were the most commonplace. And in her great faith she was not
surprised. But she was thrilled. The knowledge ran through her veins
like a living fire, a better nourishment than food, a more potent cure
than any medicine.

So the long days, not quite so long as they used to be, marched on.
Despite the skilful services of Pete they were still always cold,
always hungry, always weary for want of sleep, and always dirty and
unkempt. Then there came a day when Pete astonished them. He brought
in from the forest certain small limbs of tough wood, and began to
trim them and bend them into shapes that they were