Yet she still waged the fight, struggling with high courage and tireless resolution against the frightful odds that opposed her. Her faith was as of that nameless daughter of the Gileadite; and she could not yield. Not ambition, not hatred--not even such fire of fury as had been wakened in Wolf Darby's heart that first frenzied night on the hillside--could have been the impulse for such fortitude and sacrifice as hers. It was not one of these base passions--known in the full category to her rescuers who were even now bearing down upon her valley--that kept the steel in her thews and the steadfastness in her heart. She loved this man; her love for him was as wholesome and as steadfast as her own self; and the law of that love was to give him all she had. There were few witnesses to this infinite giving of hers. Ben himself still lingered in a strange stupor, remembering nothing, knowing neither the girl nor himself. Perhaps the wild things saw her desperate efforts to find food in the wilderness,--the long hours of weary searching for a handful of berries that gave such little nourishment to his weakened body, or for a few acorns stored for winter by bird or rodent. Sometimes a great-antlered moose--an easy trophy if the rifle had been unbroken--saw her searching for wocus like a lost thing in the tenacious mud of the marshes; and almost nightly a silent wolf, pausing in his hunting, gazed uneasily through the cavern maw. But mostly her long hours of service in the cave, the chill nights that she sat beside Ben's cot, the dreary mornings when she cooked her own scanty breakfast and took her uneasy rest, the endless labor of fire-mending so that the cave could be kept at an even heat went unobserved by mortal eyes. The healing forces of his body called for warmth and nourishment; but for all the might of her efforts she waged a losing fight. What little wocus she was able to find she made into bread for Ben; yet it was never enough to satisfy his body's craving. The only meat she had herself was the vapid flesh that had been previously boiled for Ben's broth; and now only a few pieces of the jerked meat remained. She herself tried to live on such plants as the wilderness yielded, and she soon began to notice the tragic loss of her own strength. Her eyes were hollow, preternaturally large; she experienced a strange, floating sensation, as if spirit and flesh were disassociated.