akor quickly unslung a belt from his harness,
and as I stepped back to parry a wicked thrust he lashed one end
of it about my left ankle so that it wound there for an instant,
while he jerked suddenly upon the other end, throwing me heavily
upon my back.

Then, like leaping panthers, they were upon me; but they
had reckoned without Woola, and before ever a blade touched me, a
roaring embodiment of a thousand demons hurtled above my prostrate
form and my loyal Martian calot was upon them.

Imagine, if you can, a huge grizzly with ten legs armed with mighty
talons and an enormous froglike mouth splitting his head from ear
to ear, exposing three rows of long, white tusks. Then endow this
creature of your imagination with the agility and ferocity of a
half-starved Bengal tiger and the strength of a span of bulls, and
you will have some faint conception of Woola in action.

Before I could call him off he had crushed Lakor into a jelly with
a single blow of one mighty paw, and had literally torn the other
thern to ribbons; yet when I spoke to him sharply he cowed sheepishly
as though he had done a thing to deserve censure and chastisement.

Never had I had the heart to punish Woola during the long years
that had passed since that first day upon Mars when the green jed
of the Tharks had placed him on guard over me, and I had won his
love and loyalty from the cruel and loveless masters of his former
life, yet I believe he would have submitted to any cruelty that I
might have inflicted upon him, so wondrous was his affection for
me.

The diadem in the center of the circlet of gold upon the brow of
Lakor proclaimed him a Holy Thern, while his companion, not thus
adorned, was a lesser thern, though from his harness I gleaned that
he had reached the Ninth Cycle, which is but one below that of the
Holy Therns.

As I stood for a moment looking at the gruesome havoc Woola had
wrought, there recurred to me the memory of that other occasion
upon which I had masqueraded in the wig, diadem, and harness of
Sator Throg, the Holy Thern whom Thuvia of Ptarth had slain, and now
it occurred to me that it might prove of worth to utilize Lakor's
trappings for the same purpose.

A moment later I had torn his yellow wig from his bald pate and
transferred it and the circlet, as well as all his harness, to my
own person.

Woola did not approve of the metamorphosis. He sniffed at me and
growled ominously, but when I spoke to him and patt