"No, Captain."
"Can you see anything?"
"No, Captain; but it is too good a morning to accept failure."
"The sun doesn't put on mourning for every miserable dog that dies." And then, as Anton resumed his walk without a word, Stefan's voice was heard calling Ellerey to breakfast.
All the stones which had once served for seats and a table had been piled up against the door, and the food was spread in a little circle in the centre of the floor. It was Stefan's arrangement. He had refused all help from the Princess, gruffly but firmly, although the gruffness may have been something less than his usual manner and intended for courtesy. Maritza stood with her hands behind her watching him, a smile upon her lips.
"There's more table than breakfast, Captain," he said as Ellerey came down; "but it's as well to have things orderly. There's little enough to say grace for, but there's a lesson in the display, for all that. It represents all that stands between us and starvation."
"With care, Stefan, we can live for—" And then Ellerey paused.
"Quite so, Captain. I've been trying to fix a limit myself and failed."
Ellerey looked at the scraps of food. At any other time he would have spurned them as a meal of any sort; but in such a case as theirs was, morsels of food bulk large with possibilities.
"To-day and perhaps to-morrow," he muttered.