agged onto a saddle, but a wave of pain rushed up his side and numbed
his brain. Thereafter his senses returned by fits and starts, vaguely.
Once he felt a steel cable that girdled his waist and breast and held
him erect, though his head flopped back and forth; once his eyes opened
and above him glittered the bright field of stars towards which he
drifted through space, a mind without a body; once a stab of torment
wakened him enough to hear: "Easy Satan; watch them stones. One more
jolt like that will send him clear to--" And the voice glided into an
eternity of distance. Yet again he swung tip from the pit of darkness
and became aware of golden hair around a woman's face, and a marvelous
soft, cool hand upon his forehead. Her voice reached him, too, and made
him think of all things musical, all things distant, like the sounds of
birds falling from the sky and though he understood not a syllable, a
sweet assurance of safety flooded through him. He slept.

When he woke again, it was from a dream of fleeing through empty air
swifter than the wind with a wolf-dog looming behind him out of space,
but presently he found that he was lying in a bed with a stream of
sunlight washing across a white coverlet. A door at his right swung
open and there in the entrance stood the wolf-dog of his vision with a
five-year-old girl upon its back.

"Don't go in there, Bart!" whispered the child. "Go on back!"

She took one of those pointed wolf-ears in her chubby fist and tugged to
swing him around, but Bart, with a speed which the eye could not follow,
twisted his head and the rows of great teeth closed over her hand.
It was so horrible that the cry froze in the throat of Gregg, yet the
child, with only a little murmur of anger, reached over with her other
hand and caught the wolf by the nose.

"Bad Bart!" she whispered, and raised the hand which he instantly
released. White marks showed on the pudgy tan. "Bad dog!" she repeated,
and beat his neck with an impotent little fist. The wolf-dog cringed,
and turned from the door.

"Come in," invited Gregg. He was surprised to find his voice thin, apt
to swing up to a high pitch beyond his control. A shower of golden curls
tossed away from her face as she looked to him. "Oh!" she cried, still
with a guarded voice. She leaned far over, one hand buried in the ruff
of Bart's neck to secure her balance, and with the other she laid hold
of his right ear and drew him around facing the door once m