The other miscreant, though well occupied with Kirstie's mad grip at his throat, had seen, from the corner of his eyes, that black monster emerge like fate and charge upon his comrade. To him, Kroof looked as big as an ox. With a gasping curse he tore himself free; and, hurling Kirstie half across the table, he rushed from the cabin. His panic was lest the monster should return and catch him, like a rat in a pit, where there was no chance of escape.

As a matter of fact, Kroof was just returning, with an angry realization that her foe could run faster than she could. And lo! here was another of the same breed in the very doorway before her. As she confronted him, his eyes nearly started from his head. With a yell he dodged past, nimble as a loon's neck. Savagely she struck out at him with her punishing paw. Had she caught him, there would have been one rogue the fewer, and blood on the cabin threshold. But she missed, and he went free. He ran wildly over the snow patches in pursuit of his fleeing comrade; while Kroof, all a-bristle with indig

nation, hurried into the cabin, to be hugged and praised with grateful tears by Kirstie and Miranda.

When the first of the fugitives, the lean and swarthy one, reached the edge of the woods, he paused to look back. There was no one following but his comrade, who came up a moment later and clutched at him, panting heavily. Neither, for a minute or two, had breath for any word but a broken curse. The big, bristly scoundrel called Bill was bleeding at the wrist from Kirstie's bite, and his throat, purple and puffed, bore witness to the strength of Kirstie's fingers. The other had got off scot free. The two stared at each other, cowed and discomfited.

"Ever see the likes o' that?" queried Bill, earnestly.

"Be damned ef 't wan't the devil himself!" asseverated his companion.

"Oh, hell! 't were jest a b'ar!" retorted Bill, in a tone of would-be derision. "But bigger'n a steer! I don't want none of it!"

"B'ar er devil, what's the odds? Let's git, says I!" was the response; and simul

taneously the two lifted their eyes to observe the sun and get their bearings. But it was not the sun they saw. Their jaws fell. Their hair rose. For a moment they stood rooted to the ground in abject horror.

Right above their heads, crouched close upon the vast up-sloping limb of a hoary pine, lay a panther, looking down upon them with fixed, dilating stare. They saw his claws, protruding, and set firmly into the bark. They saw the backward, snarling curl of his lips as his head reached down toward them over the edge of his perch. For several choking heart-beats the picture bit itself into their coarse brains; then, with a gurgling cry that came as one voice from the two throats, both sprang aside like hares and ran wildly down the trail.

Within a few hours of their arrival at the Settlement, this was the story on all lips, that Kirstie's cabin was guarded by familiars, who could take upon themselves at will the form of bear, panther, wolf, or mad bull moose, for the terroriz