o the
emergency. The bears were now almost upon them. He jerked the girl
violently to her feet, and spoke to her in a voice that brought her
back to herself. Dragging her by the wrist, he ran on straight for the
barrier. The girl, obedient to his order, shrank close to his side and
ran on bravely, keeping her eyes upon the ground.

"If they are gods, those bright, dancing things," said Grom, with a
confidence he was far from feeling, "they will save us. If they are
devils, I will fight them."

A little to the right appeared a gap in the leaping barrier, an
opening some fifty feet across. Grom made for the center of this
opening. The fissure here was not more than three feet in width. The
runners took it in their stride. But a fierce heat struck up from it.
It filled the girl with such horror that her senses failed her
utterly. She ran on blindly a dozen paces more, then reeled and fell
in a swoon. Before her body touched the ground, Grom had swung her up
into his arms, but as he did so he looked back.

The bears were no longer pursuing. A spear's-throw back they had
stopped, growling and whining, and swaying their mountainous forms
from side to side in angry irresolution.

"They fear the bright, dancing things," said Grom to himself; and
added, with a throb of exultation, "which I do not fear."

Noticing for the first time in his excitement that the ground, here
parched and bare, was uncomfortably hot beneath his feet, he carried
his burden a few rods further on, to where the green began again, and
laid her down on the thick herbage. Then he turned to see what the
bears were going to do.

Seeing that their intended prey made no further effort to flee, the
two monsters grew still more excited. For a moment Grom thought they
would dare the passage of the barrier, but he was reassured to see
that the flames filled them with an insuperable fear. They dared not
come nearer than the thin edges of the verdure. At last, as if the
same notion had struck them both at once, they whirled about
simultaneously, made off among the dense thickets to the right, and
disappeared.

Grom knew far too well the obstinate vindictiveness of their kind to
think that they had given up the chase; but, feeling safe for the
present, and seeing that the girl, recovered from her swoon, was
sitting up and staring with awed eyes at the line of fire, he turned
all his attention to these mysterious, shining, leaping shapes to
which they owed the