‘I’ll never forgive myself,’ I said.

‘I was frightened,’ she said. ‘There’s not much food in the house,’ she went on.

‘It’ll do one meal, surely,’ I said. ‘I’ll soon get more.’

‘You can’t! you can’t!’ she cried, ‘it’s not safe.’

‘As safe as starving to death with hunger, Terry.’

She looked carefully all round the cave as if it was strange to her eyes. There was fear in her voice when she looked at me again and asked:

‘What men were these, Hugh? Where were they going? What did they look like? Oh, I’m so frightened, Hugh!’ she cried in a shaken voice before I could answer her questions. Her voice was loud in the cave.

‘But don’t be frightened,’ I told her. ‘What harm can happen to us here? An army couldn’t dislodge us from this place. When I get food—’

‘You’re not going out to-day!’ she exclaimed. ‘Promise me, Hugh—I won’t let you go—don’t, don’t go!’

‘But we need meat,’ I reasoned.

‘We’ll get meat to-morrow,’ she said. ‘Wait and I’ll get up and show you how much we have, plenty to keep us—’

‘You’ll lie still until the cave warms and your clothes dry,’ I answered.

‘Then you’ll stay at home to-day? Just to-day, promise me, Hugh.’

‘Very well then,’ I agreed. ‘I can wait until to-morrow.’

Yesterday’s to-morrow is now to-day, and I have not yet gone to the hill for meat. The cave is as dark and cold as any fireless unillumined hole in the water-dripping rocks could ever be. We have been sitting all day since morning in the dark recess of our cavern, not even daring to go out for water, without fire, or light; the last of our meat is on the table, scraps of grouse and a few ounces of salt venison.

In the morning early when we wakened I started to tell Terry about a very strange dream that my waking interrupted. ‘It was as clear as day in my mind when I wakened,’ I told her; ‘I said to myself; “I’ll remember this to tell Terry,”—and now, it’s all jumbled up and broken already, and I scarcely remember it at all.’

‘Dreams are often like that,’ she said. ‘Dreams before waking are clear in your head until you try to remember them and speak about them, and then, they’re like your face in the water of a pool, when you go close to look at yourself your breath breaks the image and the water ruffles, and it’s gone. It’ll perhaps come back to you, Hugh, if you don’t try to think of it. Oh, how I slept! Like a stone. I didn’t dream—’