Because the stars pointed that the end was nearing, the black brood came behind again, and followed, noising.  Ah! if they could but be kept quiet and still, nor slip their usual harmless masks to encourage with their interest the last speed of their most deadly congener.  What shape had they?  Should he ever know?  If it were not that he was bound to compel the fell Thing that ran before him into her truer form, he might face about and follow them.  No—­no—­not so; if he might do anything but what he did—­race, race, and racing bear this agony, he would just stand still and die, to be quit of the pain of breathing.

He grew bewildered, uncertain of his own identity, doubting of his own true form.  He could not be really a man, no more than that running Thing was really a woman; his real form was only hidden under embodiment of a man, but what it was he did not know.  And Sweyn’s real form he did not know.  Sweyn lay fallen at his feet, where he had struck him down—­his own brother—­he:  he stumbled over him, and had to overleap him and race harder because she who had kissed Sweyn leapt so fast.  “Sweyn, Sweyn, O Sweyn!”

Why did the stars stop to shudder?  Midnight else had surely come!

The leaning, leaping Thing looked back at him with a wild, fierce look, and laughed in savage scorn and triumph.  He saw in a flash why, for within a time measurable by seconds she would have escaped him utterly.  As the land lay, a slope of ice sunk on the one hand; on the other hand a steep rose, shouldering forwards; between the two was space for a foot to be planted, but none for a body to stand; yet a juniper bough, thrusting out, gave a handhold secure enough for one with a resolute grasp to swing past the perilous place, and pass on safe.

Though the first seconds of the last moment were going, she dared to flash back a wicked look, and laugh at the pursuer who was impotent to grasp.

[Illustration:  The Finish]

The crisis struck convulsive life into his last supreme effort; his will surged up indomitable, his speed proved matchless yet.  He leapt with a rush, passed her before her laugh had time to go out, and turned short, barring the way, and braced to withstand her.

She came hurling desperate, with a feint to the right hand, and then launched herself upon him with a spring like a wild beast when it leaps to kill.  And he, with one strong arm and a hand that could not hold, with one strong hand and an arm that could not guide and sustain, he caught and held her even so.  And they fell together.  And because he felt his whole arm slipping, and his whole hand loosing, to slack the dreadful agony of the wrenched bone above, he caught and held with his teeth the tunic at her knee, as she struggled up and wrung off his hands to overleap him victorious.

Like lightning she snatched her axe, and struck him on the neck, deep—­once, twice—­his life-blood gushed out, staining her feet.