and his strong hands seized
it.

As he swung it high the girl leaped between--with a last, frantic
effort, wholly instinctive--to shield Ben's body with her own. But it
was only an instant's reprieve. Chan had followed Ben, and sharing Ray's
fiendish mood, jerked her aside. Ben raised himself up as far as he
could at a final impulse to thrust the girl out of harm's way.

Yet it was to be that Ray's murderous blow was never to go home. A
mighty and terrible ally had come to Ben's aid. He came pouncing from
the darkness, a gaunt and dreadful avenger whose code of death was as
remorseless as Ray's own.

It was Fenris the wolf, and he had found his master at last. Missing him
at the accustomed place in the cave, he had trailed him to the lake
margin: a smell on the wind had led him the rest of the way. He was not
one to announce his coming by an audible footfall in the thicket. Like a
ghost he had glided almost to the edge of the firelight, lingering
there--with a caution learned in these last wild weeks of running with
his brethren--until he had made up his brute mind in regard to the
strangers in the camp. But he had waited only until he saw Ray kick the
helpless form before him,--that of the god that Fenris, for all the wild
had claimed him, still worshipped in his inmost heart. With fiendish,
maniacal fury he had sprung to avenge the blow.

And his three followers, trained by the pack laws to follow where he
led, and keyed to the highest pitch by their leader's fury, leaped like
gray demons of the Pit in his wake.

XLII

As a young tree breaks and goes down in the gale Ray Brent went down
before the combined attack of the wolves. What desperate struggle he
made only seemed to increase their fury and shatter him the faster.
Utterly futile were all his blows: his frantic, piercing screams of fear
and agony raised to heaven, but were answered with no greater mercy than
that he would have shown to Ben a moment before.

Seemingly in an instant he was on his back and the ravening pack were
about him in a ring. In that lurid firelight their fangs gleamed like
ivory as they flashed, here and there, over his body and throat, and
their fierce eyes blazed with pale-blue fire,--the mark and sign of the
blood madness of the beasts of prey.

Seemingly in a single instant the life had been torn from him, leaving
only a strange, huddled, ghastly thing beside the dying fire. But the
pack leaped from him at once. Fenris had