Thanks to the snow and the stars, Talabor could see clearly enough what was going on outside; and this is what he saw: two muffled figures hurrying towards the house, by the very same path which he himself had trodden only a short time before; tracking him by his deep footprints in all probability. But a few moments after he had told Dora to put out the fire, one of the two figures, an unmistakable Tartar, was overtaken by the wolves, and there began one of those desperate conflicts between man and beast, which more often than not ended in the defeat of the former, firearms not being as yet in existence. "Here! Help! Father!" shouted the one attacked. He had beaten down one wolf, with a sort of club, and was trying his utmost to defend himself against two others. At this appeal, made, by-the-bye, in the purest Magyar, the man in front hurried back to the help of his son. "Surely he spoke Magyar!" whispered Dora. "There are only two of them, at all events," was Talabor's answer, that fact being much the more reassuring of the two in his eyes, for he had heard, during their wanderings, that there were more "Tartar-Magyars" in the world than Libor the clerk. He fitted an arrow to his bow, as he spoke, and added, in an undertone, "They are coming, and the wolves after them! but there are only two, nothing to be afraid of; trust me to manage them!" In fact the two men were already floundering in the courtyard, and close at their heels rushed the whole pack, disappearing now and again in the deep snow, then lifting up their shaggy heads out of it, while they kept up an incessant chorus of howls. Tartar-Magyars might be enemies, but wolves certainly were, thought Talabor, as he let fly his arrow and stretched the foremost wolf upon the ground, just as it was in the act of seizing one of the Tartars. Apparently the fugitives had not heard the twang of the bow-string, for as soon as they caught sight of the open door, they hurried towards it with the one idea of escaping their pursuers, so it seemed. But when Talabor again took aim, and a second wolf tumbled over, one of the men looked up, saw the arrow sticking in the wolf's back, and cried out, as if thunderstruck, "Tartars! per amorem Dei patris!" (Tartars! for the love of God!) And having so said, he stopped short, irresolute, as not knowing which of the two dangers threatening him it were better to grapple with. Talabor heard the exclamation, and, whether or no he understood more than the first word, at least he knew that it was uttered in Latin. The fugitives must surely be ecclesiastics, who had adopted the Tartar dress merely for safety's sake.