A flickering light was the first thing that impressed itself upon my awakening faculties. I blinked, shook my head, came suddenly fully awake. I was lying on my back in a small glade, walled by towering black trees which fitfully reflected the uncertain light that emanated from a torch stuck upright in the earth near me. My head throbbed, and blood clotted my scalp; my hands were fastened together before me by a pair of handcuffs. My clothes were torn and my skin scratched as if I had been dragged brutally through the brush. A huge black shape squatted over me--a black man of medium height but of gigantic breadth and thickness, clad only in ragged, muddy breeches--Tope Braxton. He held a gun in each hand, and alternately aimed first one and then the other at me, squinting along the barrel. One pistol was mine; the other had once belonged to the constable that Braxton had brained. I lay silent for a moment, studying the play of the torchlight on the great black torso. His huge body gleamed shiny ebony or dull bronze as the light flickered. He was like a shape from the abyss whence mankind crawled ages ago. His primitive ferocity was reflected in the bulging knots of muscles that corded his long, massive apish arms, his huge sloping shoulders; above all the bullet-shaped head that jutted forward on a column-like neck. The wide, flat nostrils, murky eyes, thick lips that writhed back from tusk-like teeth--all proclaimed the man's kinship with the primordial. "Where the devil do you fit into this nightmare?" I demanded. He showed his teeth in an ape-like grin. "I thought it was time you was comin' to, Kirby Garfield," he grinned. "I wanted you to come to 'fo' I kill you, so you know _who_ kill you. Den I go back and watch Mistuh Grimm kill de ol' man and de gal." "What do you mean, you black devil?" I demanded harshly. "Grimm? What do you know about Grimm?" "I meet him in de deep woods, after he kill Jim Tike. I heah a gun fire and come with a torch to see who--thought maybe somebody after me. I meet Mistuh Grimm." "So you were the man I saw with the torch," I grunted. "Mistuh Grimm smaht man. He say if I help him kill some folks, he help me git away. He take and throw bomb into de cabin; dat bomb don't kill dem folks, just paralyze 'em. I watchin' de trail, and hit you when you come back. Dat man Ashley ain't plumb paralyze, so Mistuh Grimm, he take and bite out he throat like he done Jim Tike." "What do you mean, bite out his throat?" I demanded. "Mistuh Grimm ain't a human bein'. He stan' up and walk like a man, but he part hound, or wolf." "You mean a werewolf?" I asked, my scalp prickling. He grinned. "Yeah, dat's it. Dey had 'em in de old country." Then he changed his mood. "I done talk long enough. Gwine blow yo' brains out now!"