for help, where help there could be none. Its echo pealing from the rocks, scared and scattered the ravening birds one instant from their lust; they wheeled and circled in the sunlit air, then settled once more on their spoil.

A single vulture, driven from the rest, poised above him—waiting. Looking upward, he saw the bird, with its dark wings outstretched, sailing in rings round and round in the sunlight glare, impatient and athirst, its glittering eyes fixed on him -the watcher and the harbinger of death.

By the sheer force of animal instinct, strength for the moment was restored; he sprang up to drive from off him the murderous beak that would seek his life-blood, the carrion-greed that would wrench out his eyes whilst yet they saw the day! He leapt forward, striking wildly and blindly at the black shadow of the hovering bird;-at the action the wound opened, the hemorrhage broke out afreshhe fell back senseless.

CHAPTER IV.

"N'ETES VOUS PAS DU PARADIS ?”

EVEN in the silent heart of the Carpathian woods two had heard that shout of mortal extremity.

They were but a woman and a wolf-hound, resting together under the shade of the pines higher up, where the head of the torrent tumbled and splashed from rock to rock, its sheet of foam glittering in the warmth of the risen day. They heard it ;-and the woman rose with a stag-like grace of terror, blent with a haughty challenge of such weakness, and the dog, with his bristling mane erect, and his head lifted in the air, woke the echoes with a deepmouthed bay. Both listened-all was still;-then she laid her hand on the hound's shaggy coat, and gave him a single word of command. He waited, sniffing the scent borne to him on the wind, then, with his muzzle to the earth, sprang off: she followed him; the lights and shadows from the pine boughs above flung, flickering and golden, on her

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uncovered hair; a woman fair as the morning, with the free imperial step of the forest deer, and the beauty of the classic and glorious south; the beauty of Aspasia of Athens, of Lucrezia of Rome.

A few short seconds, and the hound plunged down into the pass, baying loud in fear and fury, as though he tracked the trail of the crime. The birds flew up with whirling tumult from their meal, and wheeled aloft, scared and scattered; the vulture that had her talons tangled in the hair of the fallen man, and was stretching her plumed throat to deal her first aim at his sightless eyes, taking wing slowly, leaving her prey reluctantly. The woman fell on her knees beside him where he lay across the body of his slaughtered mare, as lifeless to all semblance as the animal.

She knew that she was in the presence of crime, and she believed herself in that of death; this man had been slain foully in the heart of the forest, and she was alone, in the mountain ravine that had seen the guilt done and the blow dealt, alone with one whom his enemies had left to perish and lie unburied for the hawks and crows to tear. The night had witnessed the sin and shrouded it; she and the sunny light of day had tracked and found it.

And the sickness of its guilt was on her in all its ghastliness, it all its secret craven vileness.

One thought alone seemed left her; was she too late, or could this human life, even in its last hour, be saved, be called back even though it ebbed away?

She felt for the beating of his heart; a quick shudder ran through all her frame-her hand was wet with the blood that had soaked through linen and velvet, and flowed in its deep stream from his breast. Yet she did not shrink, but pressed it there, seeking for the throbbing of the life; the pulse beat slowly, faintly still, beneath her touchhe lived even now. The carrion birds were poised on the boughs, or settled on the rocky ledges, waiting for the prey which soon or late must come to them; the hound was tearing up the moss with his muzzle to the earth; she called him to her; the dog was her friend, her guard, her slave-he came, reluctantly, looking backward at the mosses he had · uprooted in his thirst for the scent they gave; she drew him to her, and signed him to look at the dying man where he was stretched across his horse; then pointed to the westward with some words in Silesian. The hound looked upward an instant with earnest, eloquent eyes, trying to read her will

—then, at his full speed, obeyed her, and went down the ravine; she had sent from her her sole defender, while, for aught she knew, the murderers of the man she sought to save might return to the scene of their outrage, and deal with her as they had dealt with him. But cowardice was scarcely more in her blood than in his to whose succour she had come with the light of the morning, and whose face was turned upward white and rigid, in mute appeal, in voiceless witness, stern, as one who has fallen in fierce contest, but calm as though he lay in the tranquillity of sleep. She gazed at him thus, till hot tears gathered in her eyes, and fell upon his forehead; he was a stranger, and not of her land; she knew not how his death had been dealt, nor in what cause he had fallen, whence he came, nor what his life had been; but his face touched to the heart all of pity there was in her, where he lay blind and unconscious in the glory of the sun, though many had said that pity was a thing unknown to her. The falling of her tears upon his brow, or the touch of her hand as it swept back the hair from his temples, and fanned his temples with a fragrant bough of pine to freshen the sultry heat of the noonday, awoke him to some returning life; a heavy sigh heaved his chest, he stirred wearily, and his lips