Night drew on them; a grey chill, a grey silence, and they were enveloped in that chill and silence; and they began to go in expectation and terror, for they both knew and did not know that which they were bound for.
As they toiled desolately up the rustling and whispering side of a low hill the maid chanced to look back, and when she looked back she screamed and pointed, and clung to Becfola’s arm. Becfola followed the pointing finger, and saw below a large black mass that moved jerkily forward.
[Original Size]
“Wolves!” cried the maid. “Run to the trees yonder,” her mistress ordered. “We will climb them and sit among the branches.”
They ran then, the maid moaning and lamenting all the while.
“I cannot climb a tree,” she sobbed, “I shall be eaten by the wolves.”
And that was true.
But her mistress climbed a tree, and drew by a hand’s breadth from the rap and snap and slaver of those steel jaws. Then, sitting on a branch, she looked with angry woe at the straining and snarling horde below, seeing many a white fang in those grinning jowls, and the smouldering, red blink of those leaping and prowling eyes.