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 knew mysteriously that the end was at hand, she did not know what that end would be.

There was no perceptible change. Both were tired, but one seemed no wearier than the other. They fought as they had been fighting for an eternity—warily, carefully, circling each other like panthers, advancing, retreating, retreating, advancing, feinting, thrusting, parrying, eye to eye and blade to blade.

Yet, while in this sense there was no change, there was something new that now made its presence felt, a subtle, invisible thing, but very real—an intenser deadliness.

Meg felt it first, perhaps because she was a woman, but soon there were others who felt it also. The pock-marked earringed pirate felt it, and his avid eyes glittered with a more savage light; and somehow that mysterious knowledge, which none could question, although there was no palpable thing upon which to base it, spread from man to man until all that eager circle of spectators possessed it, and eyes widened and lips tightened as they awaited the end that was coming soon.

It came; and there was forewarning of it; but none in the circle caught the warning. They lived for nothing in that moment except the spectacle before them. Their whole being was concentrated in their eyes; all their other senses were dulled. In the woods to the west an owl hooted; in the woods to the east another answered it. Jock Pearson and Ugly Meg, his wife, were old in the ways of the woods, and there were