He turned toward the cave's mouth and with one hand began to drag away the stones so that they could go out. His other hand was pressed to his side. His work done, he picked up the rifle at his feet and went out. Gloria, swaying and stumbling, came after him. Neither spoke a word as they made a slow way through the snow. King went unsteadily with dragging feet. They climbed the cliff laboriously. They were in their cave--it was like home. She dropped down on the fir-boughs, stumbling to them in the dark. _Chapter XXXI_ Gloria did not know if she had slept or fainted. When she regained consciousness, though it was pitch dark and dead still, there was no first puzzled moment of uncertainty. That last wonderfully glad thought which had filled brain and heart when she sank down on her fir-boughs had persisted throughout her moments or hours of unconsciousness, pervading her subconscious self gloriously, flowering spontaneously in an awakening mind: Mark King had come back to her in her moment of peril; he had battled for her like the great-hearted hero that he was, he had saved her and had brought her home. Back home! She had prayed to God when utter undoing seemed inevitable, when death had seemed more desirable than life, and He had answered. He had sent Mark King to her! She was saved, and though it was cold and dark and still, she felt her heart singing within her. Having lived through all that she had endured, having been brought safely through it, she was as confident of the future as though never had evil menaced her. She felt new strength coursing through her blood, new hope rising within her, new certainty that all was right with her and Mark King, that all would be right eternally. Terror and anguish and despair that had surged over her in so many great flooding waves now receded and were gone; in their place shone the great flame of life triumphant; she thrilled through with the largeness of life. Never, thank God, would she forget how Mark King, forgetful of self, contemptuous of the frightful odds against him, had hurled himself into the midst of those drunken brutes; never would she forget how godlike he had stood forth in her eyes as those others leaped upon him and he beat them back. Forgetful of self--he had always been forgetful of self! She could not think of him as she had ever thought of any other man she had ever known--for what other man would have come to her as he had done, courting death gladly if only he could stand between her and the hideous thing that attacked her? The rush of great events had swept her mind clear of pettiness and prejudice; they bore her on from familiar view-points and to new levels; like roaring winds out of a tempestuous north they cleared away the wretched fogs that had enwrapped a self-centred girl; they made her see a man in the naked glory of his sheer, clean manhood.