Another instant both my arms were around her and I was pressing her closer, closer, closer, calling her all the precious names which only lovers know, kissing her face, her warm, sweet lips, her tumbled hair. Her arms went about my neck, her soft young body sank trembling upon my breast. She was mine! What we said the next fifteen minutes does not need transcription. Her words formed the most divine speech which ever fell from mortal lips, but there are fools abroad in the world who would not understand, so I forbear. Then, her arm in mine, we walked toward the Satyr, still in his unconventional attitude of rest. As we drew nearer, I saw that his ugly face bore an expression which indicated that he was scandalized beyond measure at the meeting he had witnessed. I was preparing to hail him jocularly, for my heart beat high with happiness which almost made me dizzy, when his features became convulsed in a look of mortal terror, and I knew that he was gazing at something behind me. I had heard no sound, but intuition now flashed me the needed warning. With the arm linked in hers I flung Celeste forward and from me as far as I could and wheeled at the same instant with the agility and ferocity of a tiger. I knew what I would see, but I was totally unprepared for the truly horrible spectacle which confronted me. The smith was almost upon us. Bareheaded he came, stark naked to the waist. Barefooted, too, he was. His huge, hairy chest and arms, his bearded face and neck, and the long, unkempt hair of his head, invested him with a certain hideousness which might well have sent a tremor of fear to the stoutest heart. He was gnashing his teeth like a wolf--I could hear them click plainly--and muttering throaty, guttural sounds of wrath. He checked his rush short when I turned and faced him, and stood ten feet away, glaring insanely from me to Celeste, from Celeste to me. His mind was gone; I knew it then. As I waited his attack, he gave vent to a yell which was a fearful mingling of screech and laugh, stooped as though about to charge me, then, with motions so swift I could not comprehend his hellish purpose, he swung a short, thick club which he held and cast it with all his might--at Celeste! It sang fiendishly by my ear, I heard a scream, and there my Dryad was lying on the ground, a crumpled bit of white in the shadow-flecked glade. For a moment the night grew black. The darkness passed. I looked again. Jeff Angel was bending over her. I could not go to her yet. Time to bury my dead when her murderer--A new sound dispelled the numbing lethargy which this devil's blow had thrown upon me. It was Buck laughing. He was bending over, his hands on his knees, and his insane merriment was grating and mechanical. I sprang for him then; silent, grim. He jumped aside with a gibing croak, and, yielding to some reasonless vagary, whirled and ran. I was after him ere he had measured his first leap, for now I was