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 claimed, "and you are well rid of him. I like plain speech, Mistress, and now I would ask a plain question. Captain Falcon desires you, and to save himself your father would give you to him?"

She nodded.

"I am not such a fool as I look," the hunter grumbled apologetically. "Long ago I guessed it. But I was ever a bungler with women and I wished to be sure."

He jabbed the fire with a broken pine branch.

"This Falcon, now," he continued reflectively. "He is something of a man in his way. He will not give up easily. I think we shall hear from him before our journey is over."

The moon showed her face as they remounted and suddenly the forest was bathed in ghostly light. Jolie, sitting her horse beside the embers of the fire, saw dimly in that pallid radiance the spectral circle that ringed them round—wolves gray and black, long-jawed and bushy tailed, prowling restlessly. Only for a moment did she see them. They had been bold in the blackness and had come close in, ranging themselves just beyond the fringe of the firelight. But as the moonlight brightened, they drew back, fading into the shadows, and when Almayne wheeled his horse and the cavalcade started, scarcely one was in sight. Once, however, Jolie glanced back and saw dim, gaunt forms creeping toward the fire, nosing here and there in quest of fragments of food.

For hours they rode on slowly but steadily, Al-