He followed a few paces in the direction taken by the wolf, then, remembering his sword, he turned aside.  He looked about upon the clear icy surface for his weapon.  The force that his arm had given it had sent it far away towards the margin of the mere, to the same spot, indeed, where the werewolf had first been seen.  At last he saw the shining blade lying in the midst of the line of light shed by the bright moon upon the polished ice.

He went towards it and bent down to pick it up.  The ice where it lay was smooth and transparent as a sheet of glass, and it seemed to Kenric as he bent over it that he saw in it the reflection of his own face.  So distinct were the features that he recoiled in sudden alarm.  Then he fell down upon his knees, resting upon his outstretched hands.  He fixed his astonished eyes upon the face in the ice.  A wild cry escaped him.  The face was not his own!

Drawing back for a moment he looked once more at the strange image.  The rounded cheeks were white as snow; the eyes were motionless and glassy; the beautiful bloodless lips, slightly parted, revealed a row of pearly teeth.  It was the face of Aasta the Fair.

Kenric tried to touch her, to take her in his arms.  But the intervening ice inclosed her as in a crystal casket.  He saw that the stray locks of her long hair, floating in the clear water, had been caught by the quick frost, and that they were now held within the firm thick ice.  Upon her fair white throat there were marks as of a man’s rough fingers.  She held her right hand upon her breast, and in its grasp there was a long sharp dirk.

Kenric rose and stood looking down upon the beautiful form of the dead girl.  He was as one who had been stunned by a terrible blow.  For many minutes he stood there mute and motionless, with folded hands and bowed head.  Soon a snowy cloud passed before the moon and cast a dark shadow upon the ice.  The imprisoned image seemed to melt away.  Yet Kenric knew that what he had seen was no illusion, but that Aasta the Fair lay lifeless in her frost-bound tomb.

Then Kenric thought of his enemy —­ who was surely Aasta’s enemy even more than his own —­ and he gripped his sword.

“I will come back,” he murmured sadly as he cast once more a lingering glance upon the now indistinct figure beneath the ice.  “I will come back, Aasta.  And now, a truce to all fear.  Let me now meet this man and slay him, for there is no one who can now mourn for his death.  It is right that he should die, for the hour of retribution has surely come!”

CHAPTER XXXI.  THE LAST DREAD FIGHT.