its black magic entered his being.
"This is the first: with this I slew Hetter and Gur, and those who
plundered my hiding-places in the woods; with this I have killed a
score of others, bursting their heads, and cracking their bones like
dry sticks. With this--with this--" but here his rage rendered him
inarticulate; he stammered and stuttered for a minute, and then as the
killing fury settled on him his yellow teeth shut with a sudden snap,
while through them his breath rattled like wind through dead pine
branches in December, the sinews sat up on his hands as his fingers
tightened upon the axe-heft like the roots of the same pines from the
ground when winter rain has washed the soil from beneath them; his
small eyes gleamed like baleful planets; every hair upon his shaggy
back grew stiff and erect--another minute and my span were ended.

With a leap from where I sat I flew at that hairy beast, and sinking my
fists deep in his throttle, shook him till his eyes blazed with
delirious fires. We waltzed across the short greensward, and in and
about the tree-trunks, shaking, pulling, and hitting as we went, till
at last I felt the man's vigour dying within him; a little more
shaking, a sudden twist, and he was lying on the ground before me,
senseless and civil! That is the worst of some orators, I thought to
myself, as I gloomily gathered up the scattered fragments of my lunch;
they never know when they have said enough, and are too apt to be
carried away by their own arguments.

That inhospitable village was left behind in full belief the mountain
looming in the south could be reached before nightfall, while the road
to its left would serve as a sure guide to food and shelter for the
evening. But, as it turned out, the morning's haze developed a strong
mist ere the afternoon was half gone, through which it was impossible
to see more than twenty yards. My hill loomed gigantic for a time with
a tantalising appearance of being only a mile or two ahead, then
wavered, became visionary, and finally disappeared as completely as
though the forest mist had drunk it up bodily.

There was still the road to guide me, a fairly well-beaten track
twining through the glades; but even the best of highways are difficult
in fog, and this one was complicated by various side paths, made
probably by hunters or bark-cutters, and without compass or guide marks
it was necessary to advance with extreme caution, or get helplessly
mazed.

A