“So he has the letter, has he?” Ray interrupted.  He smiled grimly, and his tone was again flat and strained.  “And he’s sick—­and starving.  It isn’t for your father to say, Beatrice, what’s to be done with Ben.  There’s three of us here, and he’s just one.  Don’t go interfering with what doesn’t concern you, either—­about the claim.  You take us where he is, and we’ll decide what to do with him.”

Her eyes went to his face; and her lips closed tight.  Here was one thing, on this mortal earth, that she must not tell.  Perhaps, by the mercy of heaven, they would not find the cave, hidden as it was at the edge of the little glade.  The forests were boundless; perhaps they would miss the place in their search.  She straightened, scarcely perceptibly.

“Yes, tell us where he is,” her father urged.  “That’s the first thing.  We’ll find him, anyway, in the morning.”

The girl shook her head.  She knew now that even if they promised mercy she must not reveal Ben’s whereabouts.  Their rage and cruelty would not be stayed for a spoken promise.  The only card she had left, her one last, feeble hope of preserving Ben’s life, lay in her continued silence.  Ray’s foul-nailed, eager hands could claw her lips apart, but he could not make her speak.

“I won’t tell you,” she answered at last, more clearly than she had spoken since her capture.  “You said a few minutes ago I had gone over—­to the opposite camp.  I am, from now on.  He was in the right, and he gave up his fight against you long ago.  Now I want to go.”

Fearing that Neilson might show mercy, Ray leaped in front of her.  “You don’t go yet awhile,” he told her grimly.  “I’ve got a few minutes’ business with you yet.  I tell you that we’ll find him, if we have to search all year.  And he’ll have twice the chance of getting out alive if you tell us where he is.”

She looked into his face, and she knew what that chance was.  Her eyelids dropped halfway, and she shook her head.  “I’d die first,” she answered.

“It never occurred to you, did it, that there’s ways of making people tell things.”  He suddenly whirled, with drawn lips, to her father.  “Neilson, is there any reason for showing any further consideration to this wench of yours?  She’s betrayed us—­gone over to the opposite camp—­lived for weeks, willing, with Ben.  I for one am never going to see her leave this camp till she tells us where he is.  I’m tired of talking and waiting.  I’m going to get that paper away from him, and I’m going to smash his heart with my heel.  We’ve almost won out—­and I’m going to go the rest of the way.”

Neilson straightened, his eyes steely and bright under his grizzled brows.  Only too well he knew that this was the test.  Affairs were at their crisis at last.  But in this final moment his love for his daughter swept back to him in all its unmeasured fullness,—­and when all was said and done it was the first, the mightiest impulse in his life.  Ben had been kind to her, and she loved him; and all at once he knew that he could not yield him or her to the mercy of this black-hearted man before him.