hat was full of a sudden and
unaccustomed tenderness. "Why, see now," he whispered, "that is easily
overcome. Look! I will show thee the way." Lifting himself cautiously,
he crouched on all fours in the grass, slipping and sliding forward so
hiddenly that the keen ear and eagle eye of the approaching soldier took
note of no least ripple in the quiet grass by the roadside. It was the
sinuous, silent motion of a snake; and suddenly his eyes narrowed, his
lips drew back from his teeth, his ears pricked forward, along the ridge
of his bare back the hair bristled, and the locks about his face waved
and writhed as though they were the locks of Medusa herself. Ah, and
were those the flanks and feet of a man, or of a beast, that bore him
along so stealthily? The child watched him in a horror of fascination,
rooted to the spot in terror.

With the quickness of a flash it all happened--the martial traveller
taken unaware, the broad-bladed sword wrenched from his hand by
seemingly superhuman strength, a sudden hideous grip at his throat,
blows rained upon his head, sharp sobbing breaths torn from his panting
breast ... a red stain upon the dusty road ... a huddled figure ...
silence. And he who had been a man indeed a few brief, bright years, was
no more now than carrion; and he who through all his boasted aeons had
not yet reached the stature of a man stood above the dead body, his face
no longer menacing, but beautiful with a smiling delight in his deed.
And then suddenly the spell that held the child was broken, and he
leaped out upon the murderer and beat and beat and beat upon him with
helpless, puny child-fists, and all a child's splendid and ineffectual
rage. And at that the man turned and thrust the child from him in utter
astonishment, and the boy fell heavily back upon the road, the second
quiet figure lying there. And again the man's face changed, became
vacant, bewildered, troubled; and stooping, he lifted the boy in his
arms, and ran with him westward along the road, through the fields of
dead-ripe wheat, across the stubble of the garnered barley, fleet-footed
as a deer, till he could run no more.

In a little glen of hickory and oak, through whose misty-mellow depths a
small stream trickled, he paused at last and laid the boy upon a soft
and matted bed of thick green myrtle, and brought water in his two hands
to bathe the bruised head, whimpering the while. Then he chafed the
small bare feet and warmed them in his o