wth across the glade. I was about to call out joyfully, but
there was something furtive about the figure that prevented me. The
boy's attention (for it seemed to be a lad of fifteen or sixteen) was
centered tensely on the heavy growth of trees from which he had just
emerged.

He was clad in rather tight-fitting garments entirely of green, and wore
a helmet-like cap of the same color. High around his waist he wore a
broad, thick belt, which bulked up in the back across the shoulders,
into something of the proportions of a knapsack.

As I was taking in these details, there came a vivid flash and heavy
detonation, like that of a hand grenade, not far to the left of him. He
threw up an arm and staggered a bit in a queer, gliding way; then he
recovered himself and slipped cautiously away from the place of the
explosion, crouching slightly, and still facing the denser part of the
forest. Every few steps he would raise his arm, and point into the
forest with something he held in his hand. Wherever he pointed there was
a terrific explosion, deeper in among the trees. It came to me then that
he was shooting with some form of pistol, though there was neither flash
nor detonation from the muzzle of the weapon itself.

After firing several times, he seemed to come to a sudden resolution,
and turning in my general direction, leaped--to my amazement sailing
through the air between the sparsely scattered trees in such a jump as I
had never in my life seen before. That leap must have carried him a full
fifty feet, although at the height of his arc, he was not more than ten
or twelve feet from the ground.

When he alighted, his foot caught in a projecting root, and he sprawled
gently forward. I say "gently" for he did not crash down as I expected
him to do. The only thing I could compare it with was a slow-motion
cinema, although I had never seen one in which horizontal motions were
registered at normal speed and only the vertical movements were slowed
down.

Due to my surprise, I suppose my brain did not function with its normal
quickness, for I gazed at the prone figure for several seconds before I
saw the blood that oozed out from under the tight green cap. Regaining
my power of action, I dragged him out of sight back of the big tree. For
a few moments I busied myself in an attempt to staunch the flow of
blood. The wound was not a deep one. My companion was more dazed than
hurt. But what of the pursuers?

I took the weapon fro