But at once she paused, holding hard on her self-control.  It was folly to make a blind search.  To penetrate the dark mystery of the forest with only this little light—­already flickering out—­would probably result in becoming lost herself.  Such a course would not help Ben’s cause.  Evidently he was lying within a few hundred feet of her, unconscious—­perhaps dead—­or he would have replied to her call.

Dead!  The thought sped an icy current throughout the hydraulic system of her veins.

She was a mountain girl, and she made no further false motions.  She turned at once to the cave, and piling up her kindling, built a fire just at the mouth of the cave.  It was protected here in some degree from the rain, and the wind was right to carry the smoke away.  This fire would serve to keep her direction and lead her back to the cavern.

Once more she ventured into the storm, and gathering all the cut fuel she could find, piled it on her fire.  The two spruce chunks that Ben had cut for their fireside seats were placed as back logs.  Then she hunted for pine knots taken from the scrub pines that grew in scattering clumps among the spruce, and which were laden with pitch.

One of these knots she put in the iron pan they used for frying, then lighted it.  Then she pushed into the timber.

Holding her light high she began to encircle the glade clear to the barrier of the cliffs.  To the eyes of the wild creatures this might have been a never-to-be-forgotten picture:  the slight form of the girl, her face blanched and her eyes wide and dark in the flaring light, her grotesque torch and its weird shadows, and then rain sweeping down between.  She reached the cliff, then started back, making a wider circle.

Adding fresh fuel to the torch, she peered into every covert and examined with minute care any human-shaped shadow in that eerie world of shadows; but the long half-circle brought her back to the cliff wall without results.  She was already wet to the skin, and her pine knots were nearly spent.  Ever the load of dread was heavier at her heart.  In the hour or more she had searched—­she had no way of estimating time—­she had already gone farther than Ben usually went for his fuel.

As yet no tears came; only the raindrops lay on her face and curled her dark hair in ringlets.  But she must not give up yet.  It was hard to hold her shoulders straight; but she must make the long circle once more.

With courage and strength such as she had not dreamed she possessed, she launched forward again.  But fatigue was breaking her now.  The tree roots tripped her faltering feet, the branches clutched at her as she passed.  It was hard to tell what territory she had searched, or how far she had gone.  But when she was halfway around, she suddenly halted, motionless as an image, at the edge of the stream.

The flickering light revealed a tree, freshly cut, its, naked stump gleaming and its tall form lying prone.  Yet beneath it the shadows were of strange, unearthly shape, and something showed stark white through the green foliage.  Great branches stretched over it, like bars over a prison window.