tude of
floating masses. They came on before the wind with a sort of smooth
swiftness, rising and falling noiselessly, sinking to earth, rebounding
high, soaring--all with a perfect unanimity, with a still, deliberate
assurance.

Right and left of the horsemen the pioneers of this strange army passed.
At one that rolled along the ground, breaking shapelessly and trailing out
reluctantly into long grappling ribbons and bands, all three horses began
to shy and dance. The master was seized with a sudden, unreasonable
impatience. He cursed the drifting globes roundly. "Get on!" he cried;
"get on! What do these things matter? How _can_ they matter? Back to
the trail!" He fell swearing at his horse and sawed the bit across its
mouth.

He shouted aloud with rage. "I will follow that trail, I tell you," he
cried. "Where is the trail?"

He gripped the bridle of his prancing horse and searched amidst the grass.
A long and clinging thread fell across his face, a grey streamer dropped
about his bridle arm, some big, active thing with many legs ran down the
back of his head. He looked up to discover one of those grey masses
anchored as it were above him by these things and flapping out ends as a
sail flaps when a boat comes about--but noiselessly.

He had an impression of many eyes, of a dense crew of squat bodies, of
long, many-jointed limbs hauling at their mooring ropes to bring the thing
down upon him. For a space he stared up, reining in his prancing horse
with the instinct born of years of horsemanship. Then the flat of a sword
smote his back, and a blade flashed overhead and cut the drifting balloon
of spider-web free, and the whole mass lifted softly and drove clear and
away.

"Spiders!" cried the voice of the gaunt man. "The things are full of big
spiders! Look, my lord!"

The man with the silver bridle still followed the mass that drove away.

"Look, my lord!"

The master found himself staring down at a red smashed thing on the ground
that, in spite of partial obliteration, could still wriggle unavailing
legs. Then, when the gaunt man pointed to another mass that bore down upon
them, he drew his sword hastily. Up the valley now it was like a fog bank
torn to rags. He tried to grasp the situation.

"Ride for it!" the little man was shouting. "Ride for it down the valley."

What happened then was like the confusion of a battle. The man with the
silver bridle saw the little man go past him, slashing furiously at