“Here’s where you sleep to-night, Beatrice,” he informed her.

She stopped in her work long enough to try the springy boughs with her arms; then she gave him an answering smile.  Even a tenderfoot can make some sort of a comfortable pallet out of evergreen boughs—­ends overlapping and plumes bent—­but a master woodsman can fashion a veritable cradle, soft as silk with never a hard limb to irritate the flesh, and yielding as a hair mattress.  Such softness, with the fragrance of the balsam like a sleeping potion, can not help but bring sweet dreams.

Ben had been wholly deliberate in the care with which he had built the pallet.  He had simply come to the conclusion that she was paying a high price for her father’s sins; and from now on he intended to make all things as easy as he could for her.  Moreover, she had been a sportswoman of the rarest breed and merited every kindness he could do for her.

He was not half so careful with his own bed, built sixty feet on the opposite side of the fire.  He threw it together rather hastily.  And when he walked back to the fire he found an amazing change.

Already Beatrice had established sovereignty over the little patch of ground they had chosen for the camp,—­and the wilderness had drawn back.  This spot was no longer mere part of the far-spreading, trackless wilds.  It had been set off and marked so that the wilderness creatures could no longer mistake it for part of their domain.  Over the fire she had erected a cooking rack; and water was already boiling in a small bucket suspended from it.  In another container a fragrant mixture was in the process of cooking.  She had spread one of the blankets on the grass for a tablecloth.

As twilight lowered they sat down to their simple meal,—­tea, sweetened with sugar, and vegetables and meat happily mingled in a stew.  It was true that the vegetable end was held up by white grains of rice alone, but the meat was the white, tender flesh of grouse, permeating the entire dish with its tempting flavor.  As a whole, the stew was greatly satisfying to the inner man.

“I wish I’d brought more tea,” Ben complained, as he sipped that most delightful of all drinks, the black tea beloved of the northern men.

“You a woodsman, and don’t know how to remedy that!” the girl responded.  “I know of a native substitute that’s almost as good as the real article.”

About the embers of the fire they sat and watched the tremulous wings of night close round them.  The copse grew breathless.  The distant trees blended into shadow, the nearer trunks dimmed and finally faded; the large, white northern stars emerged in infinite troops and companies, peering down through the rifts in the trees.  Here about their fire they had established the domain of man.  For a few short hours they had routed the forces of the wilderness; but the foe pressed close upon them.  Just at the fluctuating ring of firelight he waited, clothed in darkness and mystery,—­the infinite, brooding spirit of the ancient forest.