Anon he looked into another face, red too, but with no hue from the hearth or leaping flame, but red with the blood of ghastly wounds. He heard again that report, the roar louder and more terrible than any peal of thunder that rived the clouds above his head and made the mountains quake and tremble. He was conscious again of the awful stillness of death that supervened. He dropped on his knees, buried his face in his hands where they rested on picture and locket on the rude table. Ah, the past died hard; for a moment he was the lover of old--remorse, passionate expiation, solitude--he and the dead together--the world and the living forgot! He would not be false, he would be true; there was no power in any feeble woman's tender hand to drive him off his course, to shake his purpose, to make him a new, another man. _O, Vanitas, Vanitatum!_ On the other side of the door the unconscious woman slept quietly on. The red fire light died away, the glowing coals sank into gray ash. Within the smaller room the cold dawn stealing through the unshaded window looked upon a field of battle--deaths, wounds, triumphs, defeats--portrayed upon one poor human face, upturned as sometimes victors and vanquished alike upturn stark faces from the field to the God above who may pity but who has not intervened. So Jacob may have looked after that awful night when he wrestled until the day broke with the angel and would not let him go until he blessed him, walking, forever after, with halting step as memorial but with his blessing earned. Hath, this man blessing won or not? And must he pay for it if he hath achieved it? And all the while the woman slept quietly on upon the other side of that door. CHAPTER XIII THE LOG HUT IN THE MOUNTAINS What awakened the woman she did not know; in all probability it was the bright sunlight streaming through the narrow window before her. The cabin was so placed that the sun did not strike fairly into the room until it was some hours high, consequently she had her long sleep out entirely undisturbed. The man had made no effort whatever to awaken her. Whatever tasks he had performed since daybreak had been so silently accomplished that she had not been aware of them. So soon as he could do so, he had left the cabin and was now busily engaged in his daily duties outside the cabin and beyond earshot. He knew that sleep was the very best medicine for her and it was best that she should not be disturbed until in her own good time she awoke.