come.  But no; with a desperate effort he broke loose from them, seized the body of the man he had just slain, and lifting it high in the air hurled it right at the mob of his assailants, so that the shock and weight of it swept some five or six of them to the earth.  But in a minute they were all up again, except one, whose skull was smashed, and had once more fastened upon him.  And then slowly, and with infinite labour and struggling, the wolves bore the lion down.  Once even then he recovered himself, and felled an Amahagger with his fist, but it was more than man could do to hold his own for long against so many, and at last he came crashing down upon the rock floor, falling as an oak falls, and bearing with him to the earth all those who clung about him.  They gripped him by his arms and legs, and then cleared off his body.

“A spear,” cried a voice—­“a spear to cut his throat, and a vessel to catch his blood.”

I shut my eyes, for I saw the man coming with a spear, and myself, I could not stir to Leo’s help, for I was growing weak, and the two men on me were not yet dead, and a deadly sickness overcame me.

Then suddenly there was a disturbance, and involuntarily I opened my eyes again, and looked towards the scene of murder.  The girl Ustane had thrown herself on Leo’s prostrate form, covering his body with her body, and fastening her arms about his neck.  They tried to drag her from him, but she twisted her legs round his, and hung on like a bulldog, or rather like a creeper to a tree, and they could not.  Then they tried to stab him in the side without hurting her, but somehow she shielded him, and he was only wounded.

At last they lost patience.

“Drive the spear through the man and the woman together,” said a voice, the same voice that had asked the questions at that ghastly feast, “so of a verity shall they be wed.”

Then I saw the man with the weapon straighten himself for the effort.  I saw the cold steel gleam on high, and once more I shut my eyes.

As I did so I heard the voice of a man thunder out in tones that rang and echoed down the rocky ways—­

“Cease!”

Then I fainted, and as I did so it flashed through my darkening mind that I was passing down into the last oblivion of death.

IX

A LITTLE FOOT

When I opened my eyes again I found myself lying on a skin mat not far from the fire round which we had been gathered for that dreadful feast.  Near me lay Leo, still apparently in a swoon, and over him was bending the tall form of the girl Ustane, who was washing a deep spear wound in his side with cold water preparatory to binding it up with linen.  Leaning against the wall of the cave behind her was Job, apparently uninjured, but bruised and trembling.  On the other side of the fire, tossed about this way and that, as though they had thrown themselves down