ts began to wake in me. After a thorough but fruitless
search, I set out in the track of the two animals.

CHAPTER XXI. THE FUGITIVE MOTHER

As I hastened along, a cloud came over the moon, and from the gray dark
suddenly emerged a white figure, clasping a child to her bosom, and
stooping as she ran. She was on a line parallel with my own, but did not
perceive me as she hurried along, terror and anxiety in every movement
of her driven speed.

"She is chased!" I said to myself. "Some prowler of this terrible night
is after her!"

To follow would have added to her fright: I stepped into her track to
stop her pursuer.

As I stood for a moment looking after her through the dusk, behind me
came a swift, soft-footed rush, and ere I could turn, something sprang
over my head, struck me sharply on the forehead, and knocked me down.
I was up in an instant, but all I saw of my assailant was a vanishing
whiteness. I ran after the beast, with the blood trickling from my
forehead; but had run only a few steps, when a shriek of despair tore
the quivering night. I ran the faster, though I could not but fear it
must already be too late.

In a minute or two I spied a low white shape approaching me through the
vapour-dusted moonlight. It must be another beast, I thought at first,
for it came slowly, almost crawling, with strange, floundering leaps,
as of a creature in agony! I drew aside from its path, and waited. As it
neared me, I saw it was going on three legs, carrying its left fore-paw
high from the ground. It had many dark, oval spots on a shining white
skin, and was attended by a low rushing sound, as of water falling upon
grass. As it went by me, I saw something streaming from the lifted paw.

"It is blood!" I said to myself, "some readier champion than I has
wounded the beast!" But, strange to tell, such a pity seized me at sight
of the suffering creature, that, though an axe had been in my hand I
could not have struck at it. In a broken succession of hobbling leaps
it went out of sight, its blood, as it seemed, still issuing in a small
torrent, which kept flowing back softly through the grass beside me. "If
it go on bleeding like that," I thought, "it will soon be hurtless!"

I went on, for I might yet be useful to the woman, and hoped also to see
her deliverer.

I descried her a little way off, seated on the grass, with her child in
her lap.

"Can I do anything for you?" I asked.

At the sound of my voice