The tone changed once more to the personal and solicitous. "But it's been a big strain on you—I can see that. I believe I'd lie here and rest awhile if I were you. I'll eat my dinner—and the fire's about out too. That's the girl—Beatrice."
Gently he picked her up, seemingly with no physical effort and laid her in her hammock. "Then—you'll forgive me?" she asked brokenly.
"Good Heavens, I wish there was something to forgive—so we'd be a little more even. But you've accomplished something, Beatrice—and I don't know what it is yet—I only know you've changed me—and softened me—as I never dreamed any one in the world could. Now go to sleep."
He turned from her, but the food on the table no longer tempted him. For a full hour he stood before the ashes of the fire, deeply and inextricably bewildered with himself, with life, and with all these thoughts and hopes and regrets that thronged him. He was like ashes now himself; the fires of his life seemed burned out. The thought recalled him to the need of cutting fuel for the night's fire.
He might be able to quiet the growing turmoil in his brain when the still shadows of the spruce closed around him. He seized his axe, then peered into the cave. Beatrice, worn out by the stress of the hour before and immensely comforted by Ben's words, was already deeply asleep. His rifle leaned against the wall of the cavern, and he put it in the hollow of his arm. It was not that he feared Beatrice would attempt to procure it. The act was mostly habit, combined with the fact that their supply of meat was all but exhausted and he did not wish to miss any opportunity for big game.
The forest was particularly gloomy to-day. Its shadows lay deep. And this was not merely the result of his own darkened outlook: glancing up, he saw that clouds were gathering in the sky. They would need fuel in plenty to keep the fire bright to-night. Evidently rain was impending,—one of those cold, steady downpours that are disliked so cordially by the folk of the upper Selkirks.
He went a full two hundred yards before he found a tree to his liking. It was a tough spruce of medium height and just at the edge of the stream. He laid his rifle down, leaning it against a fallen log; then began his work.
It was an awkward place to stand; but he gave no thought to it. His mind dwelt steadily on the events in the cavern of the hour before; the girl's remorse in the instant that she had him at her mercy and the example it set for him. The blade bit into the wood with slow encroachments. Perhaps the expenditure of brute energy in swinging the axe would relieve his pent-up feelings.
He was not watching his work. His blows struck true from habit. Now the tree was half-severed: it was time to cut on the opposite side. Suddenly his axe crashed into yielding, rotten wood.
Instantly the powers of the wilderness took their long-awaited toll. Ben had been unwary, too absorbed by his swirling thoughts to mark the ambush of death that had been prepared for him. Ever to keep watch, ever to be on guard: such is the first law of the wild; and Ben had disregarded it. Half of the tree had been rotten, changing the direction of its fall and crashing it down before its time.