nter
the moves of that ambushed assassin. But the baffling thing was that
my enemy's moves countered mine in the very same way.

He had not seen my face, for my back was turned when he came up, and my
face in the shade when I whirled. But I stood between the dark and the
fire. Every motion of mine he could forecast, while I could but parry
and retreat, striving in vain to lure him out, to get into the dark, to
strike what I could not see, pushed back and back till I felt the rush
that aims not to disarm but to slay.

Our weapons rang with a glint of green lightnings. A piece of steel
flew up. My rapier had snapped short at the hilt. A cold point was at
my throat pressing me down and back as the foil had caught me that
night in M. Picot's house. To right, to left, I swerved, the last
blind rushes of the fugitive man. . . .

"Storm and cold--man and beast--powers of darkness and devil--he must
fight them all----"

The memory of those words spurred like a battle-cry. Beaten? Not yet!
"Leap to meet it! Leap to meet it!"

I caught the blade at my throat with a naked hand. Hot floods drenched
my face. The earth swam. We were both in the light now, a bearded man
pushing his sword through my hand, and I falling down. Then my
antagonist leaped back with a shivering cry of horror, flung the weapon
to the ground and fled into the dark.

And when I sat up my right hand held the hilt of a broken rapier, the
left was gashed across the palm, and a sword as like my own as two peas
lay at my feet.

The fire was there. But I was alone.

[1] Reference to M. Radisson's journal corroborates Mr. Stanhope in
this observance, which was never neglected by M. Radisson after season
of peril. It is to be noted that he made his prayers after not at the
season of peril.

CHAPTER IX

VISITORS

The fire had every appearance of a night bivouac, but there was remnant
of neither camp nor hunt. Somewhere on my left lay the river. By that
the way led back to M. Radisson's rendezvous. It was risky
enough--that threading of the pathless woods through the pitchy dark;
but he who pauses to measure the risk at each tread is ill fitted to
pioneer wild lands.

Who the assassin was and why he had so suddenly desisted, I knew no
more than you do! That he had attacked was natural enough; for whoever
took first possession of no-man's-land in those days either murdered
his rivals or sold them to slavery. But why had he flu