elt herself unutterably a part
of creation. Thus a wavering spark of hope quivered through the
blackness of her soul and gathered light.

The gloom of the sky, the shifting clouds of dull shade, split asunder
to show a glimpse of a radiant star, piercingly white, cold, pure, a
steadfast eye of the universe, beyond all understanding and illimitable
with its meaning of the past and the present and the future. Ellen
watched it until the drifting clouds once more hid it from her strained
sight.

What had that star to do with hell? She might be crushed and destroyed
by life, but was there not something beyond? Just to be born, just to
suffer, just to die--could that be all? Despair did not loose its hold
on Ellen, the strife and pang of her breast did not subside. But with
the long hours and the strange closing in of the forest around her and
the fleeting glimpse of that wonderful star, with a subtle divination
of the meaning of her beating heart and throbbing mind, and, lastly,
with a voice thundering at her conscience that a man's faith in a woman
must not be greater, nobler, than her faith in God and eternity--with
these she checked the dark flight of her soul toward destruction.

CHAPTER XII

A chill, gray, somber dawn was breaking when Ellen dragged herself into
the cabin and crept under her blankets, there to sleep the sleep of
exhaustion.

When she awoke the hour appeared to be late afternoon. Sun and sky
shone through the sunken and decayed roof of the old cabin. Her uncle,
Tad Jorth, lay upon a blanket bed upheld by a crude couch of boughs.
The light fell upon his face, pale, lined, cast in a still mold of
suffering. He was not dead, for she heard his respiration.

The floor underneath Ellen's blankets was bare clay. She and Jorth
were alone in this cabin. It contained nothing besides their beds and
a rank growth of weeds along the decayed lower logs. Half of the cabin
had a rude ceiling of rough-hewn boards which formed a kind of loft.
This attic extended through to the adjoining cabin, forming the ceiling
of the porch-like space between the two structures. There was no
partition. A ladder of two aspen saplings, pegged to the logs, and
with braces between for steps, led up to the attic.

Ellen smelled wood smoke and the odor of frying meat, and she heard the
voices of men. She looked out to see that Slater and Somers had joined
their party--an addition that might have strengthened it for