the leader
evidently understood, but which I did not, I heard him give a sharp
command. It occurred to me then that if I offered too much resistance--if
it seemed I was likely to get away from them--I might possibly be struck
as swiftly as Mercer had been. So I gave up abruptly and lay still.

They must have understood my motive--or perhaps they felt that I was not
worth the trouble of taking alive--for immediately I stopped struggling
they unhanded me and rose to their feet.

I stood up also, deciding to appear quite docile, for the time being at
any rate, until I could comprehend better with what I had to contend.

The man who appeared to be their leader issued another command. One of
the men with whom I had been struggling immediately stepped a few feet
away, out of my reach. I knew he had been told to guard me. He kept just
that distance away thereafter, following my movements closely and seeming
never to take his eyes off me for a moment.

I had opportunity now to inspect these strange enemies more closely. The
leader was the tallest. He was about five and a half feet in height, I
judged, and fairly stocky. The others were all considerably shorter--not
much over five feet, perhaps. All were broad-framed, although not stout
to any degree approaching fatness.

From their appearance, they might all have been fairly powerful men, the
leader especially. But even the short struggle I had had with them showed
me they were not. Their bodies, too, had seemed under my grip to have a
flimsy quality, a lack of firmness, of solidity, entirely belied by their
appearance.

They were all dressed in a single rude garment of short white fur, made
all in one piece, trousers and shirt, and leaving only their arms bare.
Their feet were incased in buskins that seemed to be made of leather.
Their hair was a reddish-brown color, and fell scraggling a little below
the shoulder line.

Their skin was a curious, dead white--like the pallor of a man long in
prison. Their faces, which had no sign of hair on them, were broad, with
broad flat noses, and with abnormally large eyes that seemed to blink
stolidly with an owl-like stare.

Their leader was of somewhat different type. He was, as I have said,
nearly six inches taller than the others, and leaner and more powerful
looking. His hair was black, and his skin was not so dead white. His eyes
were not so abnormally large as those of his companions. His nose was
straight, with a high br