ion, and she looked up at
Tharn quickly. To her surprise he was standing with head thrown back,
nostrils twitching as he sniffed the wind from the north. His face
seemed tense, strangely drawn.

She put a hand on his arm, her white fingers gleaming in sharp contrast
to the tanned forearm.

"What has happened, Tharn?" She glanced uneasily about at the
surrounding foliage. "Are we nearly to Sephar?"

Tharn was not listening. To his sensitive nostrils the wind was bringing
the scent of a lion--and of a girl. The odors were commingled and of
equal strength, sufficient evidence to Tharn that the girl might be in
danger.

But the scents alone had not brought the tenseness to his face. There
was a haunting familiarity to one of them--that of the girl.

And then he was galvanized into action. Whirling, he scooped up the girl
and placed her on a thick branch, close to the bole.

"Remain here until I return," he commanded. "I will come back for you."

"But why--" began the princess, then realized she was addressing thin
air. Tharn had gone, speeding through the trees into the north.

His mate was in danger! The thought echoed and re-echoed in his mind,
even as logic told him it was next to impossible for Dylara to be
elsewhere than in Urim's palace. Yet he would stake the evidence of his
senses against reason itself--as, indeed, he was doing now.

If his passage through the trees with Alurna had been rapid, he was
literally flying now--hurling himself from one branch to another with
reckless fury--taking chances he ordinarily would never have considered.

While ever stronger to his nostrils came the scent of Sadu--and of
Dylara.

At last he caught sight of her, seated on a fallen log at the edge of a
trail, carefully massaging an ankle.

And at the same instant, from his elevated position, he caught sight of
Sadu a few paces behind the unheeding daughter of Majok. The beast was
lying belly-flat behind a curtain of vines; and even as Tharn discovered
him the cat was preparing to spring.

The man of the caves never hesitated. Like a falling stone he plummeted
earthward, dropping in front of Sadu as the beast rose in its spring.

* * * * *

Dylara, aroused by crashing foliage, leaped to her feet and whirled
about. She cried out awe-struck wonder as she saw the young man who had
died beneath a Sepharian club standing between her and an on-rushing
lion.

Powerless to move, she watched