ercy! Have mercy, La Meffraye!" it wailed.

Sholto rushed across the floor, striding the body of James Douglas in
his haste. He dashed the door of the inner chamber open and was just
in time to see something dark and lithe dart through the window and
disappear into the indigo gloom without. From the bed there came a
series of gasping moans, as from a man at the point of death.

"For God's sake bring a light!" cried Sholto, "there is black murder
done here."

His father ran to the hearth, and, seizing a birchen brand, the end of
which was still red, he blew upon it with care and success so that it
burst into a white brilliant flame that lighted all the house. Then
he, too, entered the room where Sholto, with his sword ready in his
hand, was standing over the gasping, dying thing on the bed.

When Malise thrust forward his torch, lo! there, extended on the couch
to which they had carried him two hours before, lay the yet twitching
body of Caesar the cripple with his throat well nigh bitten away.

But La Meffraye was nowhere to be seen.

CHAPTER XLIX

THE BATTLE WITH THE WERE-WOLVES

"Let us get out of this hellish place," cried James Douglas so soon as
he had seen with his eyes that which lay within the bedchamber of the
witch woman, and made certain that it was all over with Caesar Martin.

So the three men issued out into the gloom of the night, and made
their way to the stable wherein they had disposed their horses so
carefully the night before.

The door lay on the ground smashed and broken. It had been driven to
kindling wood from within. Its inner surface was dinted and riven by
the iron shoes of the frightened steeds, but the horses themselves
were nowhere to be found. They had broken their halters and vanished.
The three Scots were left in the heart of the enemy's country without
means of escape save upon their own feet.

But the horror which lay behind them in the house of La Meffraye drove
them on.

Almost without knowing whither they went, they turned their faces
towards the west, in the direction in which lay Machecoul, the castle
of the dread Lord of all the Pays de Retz. Malise, as was his custom,
walked in front, Sholto and the Lord James Douglas a step behind.

A chill wind from the sea blew through the forest. The pines bent
soughing towards the adventurers. The night grew denser and blacker
about them, as with the wan waters of the marismas on one side and the
sombre arches of the