had talked to for so brief a time. Yet he found himself
looking at her elder brother with a certain reluctant
friendliness, on her account.

Suddenly, the grin was wiped from his face, and he was tense
from head to foot.

Standish, on his way homeward, was strolling past a clump of
dwarf shrubbery. And, idly watching him, Gavin could have
sworn that one end of the shrubbery moved.

Then, he was no longer in doubt. The bit of darkness detached
itself from the rest of the shrubbery, as Milo lounged past,
and it sprang, catlike, at the unsuspecting man's back.

Into the path of light it leaped. In the same atom of time,
Gavin Brice shouted aloud in sharp warning, and dashed forward,
the collie at his side.

But he was fifty feet away. And his shout served only to make
Standish halt, staring about him.

It was then that the creature from the shrubbery made his
spring. He struck venomously at Standish, from behind. And
Gavin could see, in the striking hand, a glitter of steel.

Standish--warned perhaps by sound, perhaps by instinct--wheeled
half-way around. Thus the knifeblow missed its mark between
his shoulder-blades. Not the blade, but the fist which
gripped it, smote full on Standish's shoulder. The deflected