But just when Ru's triumph appeared to be complete, there came a cry that was like a threat, and a stooping figure pressed forward with gleaming eyes. It was Zunzun the Marvel-Worker; and the malignant grin on his wily old face boded no good for Ru.
"Let me ask one thing more, Sparrow-Hearted!" he challenged, as he halted almost within touching distance. "One thing more—and if you can answer me this, I will believe that you speak truth."
"Speak then, and I will answer!" returned Ru, boldly.
"Tell me this," demanded the Marvel-Worker, in tones of ill-concealed malice. "Tell me this—where was your little wolf when you were dead? He is with us here now, yet surely the hyenas must have killed him too. Did the cave-spirit bring him also back to life?"
And, for the first time, it occurred to Ru that, in contriving his story, he had forgotten Wuff altogether. For a moment he hesitated, utterly taken aback; his faculties of speech seemed paralyzed. He saw the scores of eyes regarding him in wonder and with the first signs of doubt; he saw Zunzun's hostile grin, and a glitter of menace on the brow of Grumgra; he saw Yonyo's face contracted in a disappointed frown—and, in his confusion, all he could do was to stammer a few halting, meaningless syllables.
Before he could find coherent speech again, his sputterings were drowned out by the thunder-tones of Grumgra.
"You lie, Sparrow-Hearted! You lie! I told you you lie!" And Grumgra sprang to his feet, and the club flashed imperiously in air, and came down with a crash—where Ru had been. Leaping agilely from the attack, the intended victim had gone dashing away into the startled crowd.
But Grumgra was not to be deprived of his prey. Brushing past his bewildered people as though they had been sheaves of straw, he bowled over two or three of the more careless without so much as a backward glance; then, swinging his club viciously while wolflike snarls sounded from his throat, he started at a sprint toward the inner recesses of the gallery, where a slim figure was racing toward a black void.
In a yelling mob, the people gathered to watch. "Look at them run! Look at them run!" they cried. "Grumgra will catch him! Grumgra will catch him! He cannot beat Grumgra! Grumgra is a fast runner! Grumgra will strike him down!"
And no doubt Grumgra would have struck his victim down, had not a still more stirring event intervened.