The underbrush grew thinner, evidently removed by human hands; a few steps more and the pursuer stood in an open space in the forest which had been cleared by fire. Here stood a little hut, very roughly built of unhewn logs: instead of doors two low narrow holes were opposite each other. Such buildings were used by hunters for stations, by shepherds overtaken in the forest by storms for a shelter, but especially to keep quantities of hay which could not be dragged to the distant barns. That was the case here; heaps of the grass piled in stacks could be seen through the holes. Before Herculanus had reached the hut, an indistinct sound reached his ear from the right, the shore of the lake. He drew his sword and stopped, listening intently. There it came again! Was it a cry? It seemed like the shout with which Romans on guard gave warning of the presence of a foe. Directly afterwards he heard another noise: it was like the whirring of the string in bending and releasing the wood of the bow, then came a heavy fall or plunge into the water, and all was still again. Nothing but the metallic tapping of the woodpecker broke the silence of the forest. Cautiously raising his shield to his eyes and looking watchfully toward the right, the Roman, with his thin figure drawn to its foil height, waited several seconds longer: nothing stirred. He now sprang in two bounds across the open ground to the hut of hay, stooped and entered through the northern hole. Something rustled under the thick grass, which seemed to be alive: something glided beneath it--was it a weasel?--toward the opposite hole: only the waving motion of the bundles of hay betrayed the direction. Herculanus hastily grasped with his shield arm at the creature making the rustling and lifted the broad short sword in his right for a death-stroke. He seized something warm and drew it upward from the hay, which fell on the right and left as he dragged forward a girl whose face was covered with tangled red locks and blades of grass, through which she gazed in mortal terror and fiery wrath at her assailant. So strange, so bewitchingly beautiful was the young creature that Herculanus uttered a fierce cry of pleasure. He had vowed that the first moment he had the dangerous Barbarian alone within reach of his sword, should be her last; and even now he did not really waver in the resolve. Neither pity nor passion could influence a mind fixed solely on his uncle's wealthy yet so much youthful beauty awakened a fleeting desire for it: before he stabbed the foe, he would have one kiss from those red lips. So, reserving his right hand for the death-blow, he drew her closer to him with the left. The girl struggled with the strength of despair. Turning her head as far as possible from him, she uttered a cry of terror, like a dying fawn. It was only a moment's delay of the assassin's thrust, but it saved her.