Just one curious deep sob wracked her whole body.  The life-heat, the mystery that is being, seemed to steal away from her.  Her strength wilted; and for an instant she could only stand and gaze with fixed, unbelieving eyes.  But almost at once the unquenchable fires of her spirit blazed up anew.  She saw her task, and with a faith and steadfastness conformable more to the sun and the earth than to human frailty, her muscles made instant and incredible response.

Instantly she was beside the form of her comrade and enemy, struggling with the cruel limbs that pinned him to the earth.

XXXV

Beatrice knew one thing and one alone:  that she must not give way to the devastating terror in her heart.  There was mighty work to do, and she must keep strong.  Her only wish was to kneel beside him, to lift the bleeding head into her arms and let the storm and the darkness smother her existence; but her stern woods training came to her aid.  She began the stupendous task of freeing him from the imprisoning tree limbs.

The pine knots flickered feebly; and by their light she looked about for Ben’s axe.  Her eyes rested on the broken gun first:  then she saw the blade, shining in the rain, protruding from beneath a broken bough.  She drew it out and swung it down.

Some of the lesser limbs she broke off, with a strength in her hands she did not dream she possessed.  The larger ones were cut away with blows incredibly strong and accurate.  How and by what might she did not know, but almost at once the man’s body was free except for the tree trunk that wedged him against a dead log toward which he had leaped for shelter.

She seemed powerless to move it.  Her shoulders surged against it in vain.  A desperate frenzy seized her, but she fought it remorselessly down.  Her self-discipline must not break yet.  Seeing that she could not move the tree itself, she thrust with all her power against the dead log beside which Ben lay.  In a moment she had rolled it aside.

Then for the first time she went to her knees beside the prone form.  Ben was free of the imprisoning limbs, but was his soul already free of the stalwart body broken among the broken boughs?  She had to know this first; further effort was unavailing until she knew this.  Her hand stole over his face.

She found no reassuring warmth.  It was wet with the rain, cold to the touch.  His hair was wet too, and matted from some dreadful wound in the scalp.  Very softly she felt along the skull for some dreadful fracture that might have caused instant death; but the descending trunk had missed his head, at least.  Very gently she shook him by the shoulders.

Her stern self-control gave way a little now.  The strain had been too much for human nerves to bear.  She gathered him into her arms, still without sobbing, but the hot tears dropped on to his face.

“Speak to me, Ben,” she said quietly.  The wind caught her words and whisked them away; and the rain played its unhappy music in the tree foliage; but Ben made no answer.  “Speak to me,” she repeated, her tone lifting.  “My man, my baby—­tell me you’re not dead!”