He broke off, for Mac Strann had jerked up his head and said in a strangely muffled voice:  “What was that?”

The bullet head of Haw-Haw Langley leaned to one side, and his glittering eyes rolled up while he listened.

“Nothin’!” he said, “I don’t hear nothin’!”

“Listen again!” cried Mac Strann in that same cautious voice, as of one whispering in the night in the house of the enemy.  “It’s like a voice in the wind.  It comes down the wind.  D’ye hear now—­now—­now?”

It was, indeed, the faintest of faint sounds when Haw-Haw caught it.  It was, in the roar of the rain, as indistinct as some distant light on the horizon which may come either from a rising star or from the window of a house.  But it had a peculiar quality of its own, even as the house-light would be tinged with yellow when the stars are cold and white.  A small and distant sound, and yet it cut through the crashing of the storm more and more clearly; someone rode through the rain whistling.

“It’s him!” gasped Haw-Haw Langley.  “My God A’mighty, Mac, he’s whistlin’!  It ain’t possible!”

He reined his horse closer to the wall, listening with mouth agape.

He shrilled suddenly:  “What if he should hit us both, seein’ us together?  They ain’t no heart in a feller that can whistle in a storm like this!”

But Mac Strann had lowered his head, bulldog-like, and now he listened and thrust out his blunt jaw farther and farther and returned no answer.

“God gimme the grit to stick it out,” begged Haw-Haw Langley in an agony of desire.  “God lemme see how it comes out.  God lemme watch ’em fight.  One of ’em is goin’ to die—­may be two of ’em—­nothin’ like it has ever been seen!”

The rain shifted, and the heart of the storm rolled far away.  For the moment they could look far out across the shadow-swept hills, and out of the heart of the desolate landscape the whistling ran thrilling upon them.  It was so loud and close that of one accord the two listeners jerked their heads about and stared at each other, and then turned their eyes as hastily away, as though terrified by what they had seen—­each in the face of the other.  It was no idle tune which they heard whistled.  This was a rising, soaring pean of delight.  It rang down upon the wind—­it cut into their faces like the drops of the rain; it branded itself like freezing cold into their foreheads.

And then, upon the crest of the nearest hill, Haw-Haw Langley saw a dim figure through the mist, a man on a horse and something else running in front; and they came swiftly.

“It’s the wolf that’s runnin’ us down!” screamed Haw-Haw Langley.  “Oh, God A’mighty, even if we was to want to run, the wolf would come and pull us down.  Mac, will you save me?  Will you keep the wolf away?”

He clung to the arm of his companion, but the other brushed him back with a violence which almost unseated Haw-Haw.