lto became aware that a fierce rush of shaggy
beasts was crossing the scanty grass towards him. He saw a vision of
red mouths, gleaming teeth, and hairy breasts, into the leaping chaos
of which he plunged and replunged his sword till his arm ached. Mostly
the stricken died snapping and tearing at each other; but ever and
anon one stronger than the rest would overleap the barrier of dead and
dying wolves that grew up in front of the three men, and Sholto would
feel the teeth click clean and hard upon the mail of his arm or thigh
before he could stoop to despatch the brute with the dirk which he
grasped in his left hand.

The rush upon Sholto's side fortunately did not last long, but while
it continued the battle was strange and silent and grim--this notable
fight of man and beast. As the youth at last cleared his front of a
hairy monster that had sprung at his throat, he found himself
sufficiently free to look round the trunk of the blasted pine that he
might see how it fared with his companions.

At first he could see nothing clearly, for the same strange and weird
conditions continued to permeate the earth and air.

For a moment all would be dark and then flash on continuous flash
would follow, the wild-fire running about the tree-tops and glinting
up through the recesses of the woods as if the heavens themselves were
instinct with diabolic light.

As he looked, Sholto saw his father, a gigantic figure standing black
and militant against the brightest of it. His hand grasped a huge wolf
by the heels, and he swung the beast about his head as easily as he
was wont to handle the forehammer at home. With his living weapon
Malise had swept a space about him clear, and the beasts seemed to
have fallen back in terror before such a strange enemy.

But what of the Lord James? Overleaping the pile of dead and dying
wolves which his sword and dagger had made, and from which savage
heads still bit and snarled up at him as he went, Sholto ran round to
seek the young Lord of Avondale. At the first flash after leaving the
tree trunk he was nowhere to be seen, but a second revealed him lying
on the ground, with four shaggy beasts bending over him and tearing
fiercely at his gorget and breast-armour. With a loud shout Sholto was
among them. He passed his sword through and through the largest, and
in its fall the wounded monster turned and bit savagely at the fore
leg of a companion. The bone cracked as a rotten branch snaps
under