looked down the
path over which her feet had sped from the laborer's cot. There was
something behind her!

Ruth did not scream. A form came up the track swiftly and at first she
saw it so indistinctly that she had no idea what it really was. Had
she been spied by the men in the garden, and was one of them following
her?

She trembled so that she could not walk. She crouched back against the
hedge, watching fearfully the on-rush of the phantom-like apparition
coming so swiftly up the path.

CHAPTER XI

THE FLYING MAN

While yet the silent figure was some rods away Ruth Fielding realized
that it was no human being. It was not one of the men she had seen in
the garden of Nicko's cottage.

This creature came too swiftly up the path and skimmed the ground too
closely. A light-colored object--swift, silent and threatening of
aspect.

The girl shrank against the hedge, and the next instant--with a rush of
passage that stirred the air all about her--the Thing was gone! It was
again that strange and incomprehensible apparition of the werwolf!

If it was Bubu, the greyhound she had seen at the Chateau Marchand, he
was much lighter in color than when he appeared pacing beside his
mistress on the chateau lawns. The phantom had dashed past so rapidly
that, in the gathering dusk, Ruth could make out little of its real
appearance.

Headed toward the battle lines, it had disappeared within seconds. The
girl, her limbs still trembling, followed in haste to the highway.
Already the creature had been swallowed up in the shadows.

She went on toward the hospital gateway and had scarcely recovered her
self-control when she arrived there. Altogether, her evening's
experience had been most disconcerting.

The two men, dressed alike and apparently of the same height and
shambling manner, whom she had seen in Nicko's garden, worried her
quite as much--indeed, worried her even more than the sight of the
mysterious creature the peasants called the werwolf.

More than ever was she determined to take into her confidence somebody
who would be able to explain the mystery of it all. At least, he would
be able to judge if what made her so anxious was of moment.

And Tom Cameron's disappearance, too! Ruth's worry of mind regarding
her old friend propped her eyes open that night.

In the morning she went over the stock shelves again with the girl she
had trained, and finally announced to Mrs. Strang that she felt she