its sheer prompt temerity.

He flushed yet darker, and yet half-smiled over this earnest of
success he had won. Had there been really between himself and
Christian the rivalry that he imagined, his face had enough of the
insolence of triumph to exasperate jealous rage.

"You dare ask this!"

"Sweyn, O Sweyn, I must know! You have!"

The ring of despair and anguish in his tone angered Sweyn,
misconstruing it. Jealousy urging to such presumption was
intolerable.

"Mad fool!" he said, constraining himself no longer. "Win for
yourself a woman to kiss. Leave mine without question. Such an one
as I should desire to kiss is such an one as shall never allow a
kiss to you."

Then Christian fully understood his supposition.

"I--I!" he cried. "White Fell--that deadly Thing! Sweyn, are you
blind, mad? I would save you from her: a Were-Wolf!"

Sweyn maddened again at the accusation--a dastardly way of
revenge, as he conceived; and instantly, for the second time, the
brothers were at strife violently.

But Christian was now too desperate to be scrupulous; for a dim
glimpse had shot a possibility into his mind, and to be free to
follow it the striking of his brother was a necessity. Thank God!
he was armed, and so Sweyn's equal.

[Illustration: The Race]

Facing his assailant with the bear-spear, he struck up his arms,
and with the butt end hit hard so that he fell. The matchless
runner leapt away on the instant, to follow a forlorn hope.
Sweyn, on regaining his feet, was as amazed as angry at this
unaccountable flight. He knew in his heart that his brother was no
coward, and that it was unlike him to shrink from an encounter
because defeat was certain, and cruel humiliation from a
vindictive victor probable. Of the uselessness of pursuit he was
well aware: he must abide his chagrin, content to know that his
time for advantage would come. Since White Fell had parted to the
right, Christian to the left, the event of a sequent encounter did
not occur to him. And now Christian, acting on the dim glimpse he
had had, just as Sweyn turned upon him, of something that moved
against the sky along the ridge behind the homestead, was staking
his only hope on a chance, and his own superlative speed. If what
he saw was really White Fell, he guessed she was bending her steps
towards the open wastes; and there was just a possibility that, by
a straight dash, and a desperate perilous leap over a sheer bluff,
he might yet meet her o