Its source and origin Ben could not trace.  Perhaps it was just relief that the perilous journey was over.  The strain of his hours at the paddle had been severe; but now they were safe upon the sustaining earth.  Yet this fact alone could hardly have given him such a sense of security,—­an inner comfort new to his adventurous life.

The forest was oppressive to-night, tremulous with the passions of the Young World; yet he did not respond to it as before.  The excitement that sparkled in the red wine of his veins was not of the chase and death, and he had difficulty in linking it up with the thoughts of his forthcoming vengeance.  Rather it was a mood that sprang from their surroundings here, their shelter at the mouth of the cave.  He felt deeply at peace.

The fire blazed warmly at the cavern maw; the wolf stood tense and still, by means of the secret wireless of the wild fully aware of the tragic drama, the curtain of which was the dark just fallen; yet Ben’s wild, bitter thoughts of the preceding night did not come readily back to him.  There was a quality here—­in the firelight and the haven of the cave—­that soothed him and comforted him.  The powers of the wild were helpless against him now.  The wind might hurl down the dead trees, but the rock of the cavern Wall would stand against them.  Even the dreaded avalanche could roar and thunder on the steep above in vain.

There was no peril in the hushed, breathless forest for him to-night.  This was his stronghold, and none could assail it.  And it was a significant fact that his sense of intimate relationship with the wolf, Fenris, Was someway lessened.  Fenris was a creature of the open forest, sleeping where he chose on the trail; but his master had found a cavern home.  There was a strange and bridgeless chasm between such breeds as roamed abroad and those that slept, night after night, in the shelter of the same walls.

He watched the girl’s face, ruddy in the firelight, and it was increasingly hard to remember that she was of the enemy camp,—­the daughter of his arch foe.  To-night she was just a comrade, a habitat of his own cave.

For the first time since he had found Ezram’s body—­so huddled and impotent in the dead leaves—­he remembered the solace of tobacco.  He hunted through his pockets, found his pipe and a single tin of the weed, and began to inhale the fragrant, peace-giving smoke.  When he raised his eyes again he found the girl studying him with intent gaze.

She looked away, embarrassed, and he spoke to put her at ease.  “You are perfectly comfortable, Beatrice?” he asked gently.

“As good as I could expect—­considering everything.  I’m awfully relieved that we’re off the water.”

“Of course.”  He paused, looking away into the tremulous shadows.  “Is that all?  Don’t you feel something else, too—­a kind of satisfaction?”

The coals threw their lurid glow on her lovely, deeply tanned face.  “It’s for you to feel satisfaction, not me.  You couldn’t expect me to feel very satisfied—­taken from my home—­as a hostage—­in a feud with my father.  But I think I know what you mean.  You mean—­the comfort of the fire, and a place to stay.”