ly, with
dilating eyes! For in that syllable it all flashed upon them both like
a sudden stroke of lightning in the dark--the bloody trail, the murdered
cub, the mother upon them, and it. DEATH.

All this in a moment of time. The next, she saw them. Huge as she was,
she seemed to double herself (it was her long hair bristling with rage):
she raised her head big as a hull's, her swine-shaped jaws opened wide
at them, her eyes turned to blood and flame, and she rushed upon them,
scattering the leaves about her like a whirlwind as she came.

"Shoot!" screamed Denys, but Gerard stood shaking from head to foot,
useless.

"Shoot, man! ten thousand devils, shoot! too late! Tree! tree!" and he
dropped the cub, pushed Gerard across the road, and flew to the first
tree and climbed it, Gerard the same on his side; and as they fled, both
men uttered inhuman howls like savage creatures grazed by death.

With all their speed one or other would have been torn to fragments at
the foot of his tree; but the bear stopped a moment at the cub.

Without taking her bloodshot eyes off those she was hunting, she smelt
it all round, and found, how, her Creator only knows, that it was dead,
quite dead. She gave a yell such as neither of the hunted ones had ever
heard, nor dreamed to be in nature, and flew after Denys. She reared and
struck at him as he climbed. He was just out of reach.

Instantly she seized the tree, and with her huge teeth tore a great
piece out of it with a crash. Then she reared again, dug her claws deep
into the bark, and began to mount it slowly, but as surely as a monkey.

Denys's evil star had led him to a dead tree, a mere shaft, and of no
very great height. He climbed faster than his pursuer, and was soon at
the top. He looked this way and that for some bough of another tree to
spring to. There was none; and if he jumped down, he knew the bear would
be upon him ere he could recover the fall, and make short work of him.
Moreover, Denys was little used to turning his back on danger, and his
blood was rising at being hunted. He turned to bay.

"My hour is come," thought he. "Let me meet death like a man." He
kneeled down and grasped a small shoot to steady himself, drew his long
knife, and clenching his teeth, prepared to jab the huge brute as soon
as it should mount within reach.

Of this combat the result was not doubtful.

The monster's head and neck were scarce vulnerable for bone and masses
of hair. The man