Ruth did not scream. A form came up the track swiftly and at first she saw it so indistinctly that she had no idea what it really was. Had she been spied by the men in the garden, and was one of them following her?
She trembled so that she could not walk. She crouched back against the hedge, watching fearfully the on-rush of the phantom-like apparition coming so swiftly up the path.
CHAPTER XI
THE FLYING MAN
While yet the silent figure was some rods away Ruth Fielding realized that it was no human being. It was not one of the men she had seen in the garden of Nicko's cottage.
This creature came too swiftly up the path and skimmed the ground too closely. A light-colored object—swift, silent and threatening of aspect.
The girl shrank against the hedge, and the next instant—with a rush of passage that stirred the air all about her—the Thing was gone! It was again that strange and incomprehensible apparition of the werwolf!
If it was Bubu, the greyhound she had seen at the Chateau Marchand, he was much lighter in color than when he appeared pacing beside his mistress on the chateau lawns. The phantom had dashed past so rapidly that, in the gathering dusk, Ruth could make out little of its real appearance.
Headed toward the battle lines, it had disappeared within seconds. The girl, her limbs still trembling, followed in haste to the highway. Already the creature had been swallowed up in the shadows.