Mohican came gliding on his belly over the velvet carpet of the moss.

“Andastes,” he whispered scornfully; “they wear the heads of the beasts whose courage they lack. Fling a stone among them and they will scatter.”

As I felt around me in the darkness for a fragment of loose rock, the Mohican arrested my arm.

“Wait, Loskiel. The Andastes hang on the heels of fiercer prowlers, smelling about dead bones like foxes after a battle. Real men can not be far away.”

We lay watching the strange and grotesque creatures in the starlight; and truly they seemed to smell their way as beasts smell; and they were as light-footed and as noiseless, slinking from bush to bush, lurking motionless in