A great, gaunt form raised up from the pile of duffle in the canoe; and his fangs showed ivory white in the wan light.  It was Fenris, and he guarded the canoe.  He crouched, ready to spring if she drew near.

The girl sobbed once, then stole back to her blankets.

XXV

Ben wakened refreshed, at peace with the world as far as he could ever be until his ends were attained; and immediately built a roaring fire.  Beatrice still slept, exhausted from the stress and suspense of her attempt to escape.  When the leaping flames had dispelled the frost from the grass about the fire Ben stepped to her side and touched her shoulder.

“It’s time to get up and go on,” he said.  “We have only a few hours more of travel.”

It was true.  The river had fallen appreciably during the night.  Not many hours remained in which to make their permanent landing.  Although the river was somewhat less violent from this point on, the lower water line would make traveling practically as perilous as on the preceding day.

The girl opened her eyes.  “I’d rather hoped—­I had dreamed it all,” she told him miserably.

The words touched him.  He looked into her face, moved by the girlishness and appeal about the red, wistful mouth and the dark, brimming eyes.  “It’s pretty tough, but I’m afraid it’s true,” he said, more kindly than he had spoken since they had left the landing.  “Do you want me to cook breakfast and bring it to you here?”

“No, I want to do that part myself.  It makes the time pass faster to have something to do.”

He went to look for fresh meat, and she slipped into her outer garments.  She found water already hot in a bucket suspended from the cooking rack, permitting a simple but refreshing toilet.  With Ben’s comb she straightened out the snarls in her dark tresses, parted them, and braided them into two dusky ropes to be worn Indian fashion in front of her shoulders.  Then she prepared the meal.

It was a problem to tax the ingenuity of any housekeeper,—­to prepare an appetizing breakfast out of such limited supplies.  But in this art, particularly, the forest girls are trained.  A quantity of rice had been left from the stew of the preceding night, and mixing it with flour and water and salt, she made a batter.  Sooner or later fresh fat could be obtained from game to use in frying:  to-day she saw no course other than to melt a piece of candle.  The reverberating roar of the rifle a hundred yards down the river bank, however, suggested another alternative.

A moment later Ben appeared—­and the breakfast problem was solved.  It was another of the woods people that his rifle had brought down,—­one that wore fur rather than feathers and which had just come in from night explorations along the river bank.  It was a yearling black bear—­really no larger than a cub—­and he had an inch of fat under his furry hide.