pping to listen
for the distant halloo, or bark of a dog, which might denote that he was
followed, or that there was a search party abroad, but he heard nothing
save the usual forest sounds,--the dropping of acorns, the sighing
leaves, the cry of some night bird,--sounds that seemed to make the
night more still than silence.

He was nearing his destination when from out a shadowy clump of alders,
standing upon the bank of the stream which he had just crossed, there
shot a long arm, and the next moment he was wrestling with a dark and
powerful figure whose naked body slipped from his hold as though it had
been greased. But Landless, too, was strong and determined, and the two
swayed and strained backwards and forwards through the darkness, wary
and resolute, neither giving his antagonist advantage. The hand of the
unknown writhed itself from the other's clasp and stole downwards
towards his waist. Landless felt the motion and intercepted it. Then the
figure, with an angry guttural sound, began to put forth its full
strength. The arms encircled Landless with a slowly tightening iron
band; the great dark shoulder came forward with the force of a
battering-ram; the limbs twined like boa-constrictors around the limbs
of the other. Locked together, the two reeled into a little fairy glade,
where the short grass, pearled with dew, lay open to the moon. Here,
borne backwards by the overwhelming force of his assailant, Landless
fell heavily to the ground. The figure falling with him, pinned him to
the earth with its knee upon his breast. In the moonlight he saw the
gleam of the lifted knife.

He had had but time for a half-uttered, half-thought prayer when the
pressure upon his breast relaxed; the knife fell, indeed, but harmlessly
upon the grass, and the figure rose to its height with an astonished
"Ugh!"

Landless, rising also, began to think that he recognized the gigantic
form towering through the pale moonlight.

"Ugh!" said the figure again. "The great Spirit threw us into the light
in time. Monakatocka had been forever shamed had his knife drunk the
life of his friend."

"Why did you set upon me?" demanded Landless, still breathless from the
struggle, while the Indian was as calmly composed as upon the day of
their first meeting.

"Monakatocka took you for the man for whom they hunt with dogs through
the forest, scaring the deer from the licks and the partridge from the
fern. Two nights ago Major Carrington said t