gracefully. But Wrentz had not counted on
a second shorter turn to the opposite direction. And he worked the
wheel madly for a second swerve; the huge car skidded, spun round, and,
reeling on two wheels for an instant, turned over in the ditch.

It was several moments before Pauline opened her eyes. She shut them
quickly and staggered to her feet shuddering--she had been lying
across Rocco's dead body which had broken her fall and saved her life.

Two other men lay motionless in the road. But from under the
overturned car there came a sound, and Pauline realized, with quick
alarm, that Wrentz was still alive. She ran across the road and into
the parked woods that hid the railroad from the drive.

Wrentz struggled out from beneath the car. His eyes swept swiftly from
the bodies of his dead comrades to the form of Pauline just vanishing
in the thicket. He was bruised and bleeding, but with the instinct of
a beast of prey he followed his quarry.

"Dead or alive was right," said Burgess, jumping from his wheel and
examining the bodies in the road. "I wonder what that fellow was up
to. And where is the girl?"

"I saw her and one of the men make into the park there," said Blount.
"You take charge here and I'll go after them."

As he moved into the thicket in the direction Pauline had taken young
Blount's attention was attracted by a new commotion. The park was on
the crest of a steep cliff overlooking the railroad tracks and from the
tracks came a riot of voices. Blount forced his way through the wood
to a viewpoint from the cliff. Below him a score of men were moving
rapidly along the tracks in wide, open order, evidently bent on some
sort of a hunt.

"The circus men," said Blount to himself. "An animal must have got
out. This is certainly some day for business."

He turned back to the work in hand.

Pauline, spurred by terror as she realized that Wrentz was again upon
her trail, had sped like a wild thing through the park paths. She
could hear the heavy footsteps of her pursuer close behind. She could
hear also a shouting from afar off. She made toward the shouting--
the sound of any voice but the voices of the inhuman men who had
planned her death was welcome to her ears.

She came out upon the cliff where it sloped steeply to the railroad
yards, but not too steeply to prevent her descending. From her
position, the lines of freight cars cut off from her vision the strange
group of hunters who