with
his experiment. His fantastic mood grew. He was a spirit of the woods
himself; one of those old fauns of the Greeks, and he was really there
to punish the evil invaders of his island. His body seemed to grow light
with his spirit and he slid away among the trees with astonishing ease,
as sure of foot and as noiseless as Tayoga himself. Then the owl gave
forth his long, lonely cry with increased volume and fervor. It was a
note filled with complaint and mourning, and it told of the desolation
that overspread a desolate world.

Robert knew now that the leader and his men were disturbed. He could
tell it by the anxious way in which they watched the woods, and, gliding
farther around the circle, he sent forth the cry a third time. He was
quite sure that he had made a further increase in its desolation and
menace, and he saw the swart leader and his men draw together as if they
were afraid.

The owl was not the only trick in Robert's trade. His ambition took a
wide sweep and fancy was fertile. He had aroused in these men the fear
of the supernatural, a dread that the ghosts of those whom they had
murdered had come back to haunt or punish them. He had been an apt pupil
of Tayoga before the slaver came to Albany, and now he meant to show the
ruffians that the owl was not the only spirit of fate hovering over
them.

The deep growl of a bear came from the thicket, not the growl of an
ordinary black bear, comedian of the forest, but the angry rumble of
some great ursine beast of which the black bear was only a dwarf cousin.
Then he moved swiftly to another point and repeated it.

He heard the leader cursing and trying to calm the fears of the men
while it was evident that his own too were aroused. The fellow suddenly
drew a pistol and fired a bullet into the forest. Robert heard it
cutting the leaves near him. But he merely lay down and laughed. His
fantastic impulse was succeeding in more brilliant fashion than he had
hoped.

Imitating their leader, six or eight of the men snatched out pistols and
fired at random into the woods. The cry of a panther, drawn out, long,
full of ferocity and woe, plaintive on its last note, like the haunting
lament of a woman, was their answer. He heard a gasp of fear from the
men, but the leader, of stauncher stuff, cowed them with his curses.

Robert moved back on his course, and then gave forth the shrill, fierce
yelp of the hungry wolf, dying into an angry snarl. It was, perhaps, a