This was no little tragedy:  the two sticks of condensed and concentrated protein might have kept Ben alive for a few days more.  It was disaster, merciless and sweeping.  And the brave heart of the girl seemed to break under the blow.

The hot, bitter tears leaped forth; but she suppressed the bitter, hopeless sobs that clutched at her throat.  She must not let Ben know of this catastrophe.  Likely in his stupor he would not understand; yet she must not take the chance.  She must nourish the spark of hope in his breast to the last hour.  She walked to the mouth of the cave; and Famine itself stood close, waiting in the shadows.  She gazed out into the gathering gloom.

The tears blinded her eyes at first.  Slowly the dark profile of the spruce against the gray sky penetrated to her consciousness:  the somber beauty of the wilderness sky line that haunts the woodsman’s dreams.  With it came full realization of the might and the malevolency of these shadowed wilds she had battled so long.  They had got her down at last; they had crushed her and beaten her, and had held up to scorn her sacrifice and her mortal strength.  She knew the wild wood now:  its savage power, its remorselessness, and yet, woods girl that she was, she could not forget its dark and moving beauty.

The forest was silent to-night.  Not a twig cracked or a branch rustled.  It was hushed, breathless, darkly sinister.  All at once her eyes peered and strained into the dusk.

Far across the valley, beyond the beaver marsh and on the farther shore of the lake she saw a little glimmer of light through the rift in the trees.  She dared not believe in its reality at first.  Perhaps it was a trick of her imagination only, a hallucination born of her starvation, child of her heartfelt prayer.  She looked away, then peered again.  But, yes—­a tiny gleam of yellow light twinkled through the gloom!  It was real, it was true!  A gleam of hope in the darkness of despair.

Her rescuers had come.  There could be no other explanation.  She hastened into the cave, drew the blankets higher about Ben’s shoulders, then crept out into the dusk.  Half running, she hastened toward their distant camp fire.

XXXVIII

Beatrice’s first impulse was to run at a breakneck pace down the ridge and about the lake into her father’s camp, beseeching instant aid to the starving man in the cave.  She wished that she had a firearm with which to signal to them and bring them at once to the cavern.  And it was not until she had descended the ridge and stood at the edge of the beaver meadow that her delirious joy began to give way to serious, thought.

She was brought to a halt first by the sight of the horses that had wandered about the long loop of the lake and were feeding in the rich grass of the meadow.  The full moon rising in the east had cast a nebulous glow over the whole countryside by now; and she could make a hasty estimation of their numbers.  It was evident at once that her father had not made the expedition alone.  The large outfit implied a party of at least three,—­indicating that Ray Brent and Chan Heminway had accompanied him.