hiding the mountains on all sides. Light green foliage overhead, where branches thickly interlaced from great trees growing out of the bank high above, made a cool, lucent shadowiness all around him. There was a delicious odor of sweet-shrub in the air, and the fruity fragrance of the dark, wild wake-robin underfoot. The tremendous rocks were covered with the most exquisite forms of lichen in all their varied shades of richness and delicacy.
He began carefully removing portions here and there to examine under his microscope, when he noticed, almost crushed under his foot, a pale purple orchid like the one Cassandra had placed on his table. Always thinking of her, he stooped suddenly to lift the frail thing, and at the instant a rifle-shot rang out in the still air, and a bullet meant for his heart cut across his shoulders like a trail of fire and flattened itself on the rock where he had been at work. At the same moment, with a bound of tiger-like ferocity and swiftness, one leaped toward him from a near mass of laurel, and he found himself grappling for life or death with the man who fired the shot.
Not a word was spoken. The quick, short breathing, the scuffling of feet among the leaves, and the snapping of dead twigs underfoot were the only sounds. Had the youth been a trained wrestler, David would have known what to expect, and would have been able to use method in his defence. As it was, he had to deal with an enraged creature who fought with the desperate instinct of an antagonist who fights to the death. He knew that the odds were against him, and felt rising within him a wild determination to win the combat, and, thinking only of Cassandra, to settle thus the vexed question, to fight with the