When the waters struck the great bowlders of the river bed the foam gleamed a curious, pale white in the twilight,—otherwise the waters would have seemed like a dark void. The dog raced up and down the bank in excitement, then half-entered the water. Hugh saw his difficulty at once. He could not make headway in that raging torrent, and was trusting to Hugh for aid. “What is it, old man?” he asked quietly, just loud enough to be heard above the noise of the waters. “What do you want me to do?” The old ewe brushed close to him, as if she too looked to him for aid. If the light had been better, he could have seen the despair and agony in her quiet eyes. He studied closely the white patches on the river. He did not have the feline’s eyes, to see plain in the half-dark, and the dog’s were better able to penetrate the gloom than his. But slowly he grew accustomed to the half-darkness, and he knew the truth. The lamb still struggled in the driftwood. And for one fraction of a second he thought that he saw something else. It seemed to him that two strange, sinister lights suddenly glowed from the thickets on the opposite bank; then went out. They were close together, and they were round, and they were just alike. They were not twinkling lights: but rather were a strange blue-green like the flame that plays about an alcohol burner. No human being could have seen those dreadful blue disks and ignored them: their terror went too deep for that. Man knows the terror of lightning, the dread (as well as the love) of fire, the fear of flooding waters, but he knows those two twin circles best of all. They carry him back to the first great Terror; they waken memories from the depths of the germ plasm; they recall the sight of other such fiery spheres, gleaming in the darkness at the mouth of the cave. Hugh’s heart seemed to pump an icy stream through his veins. But he forced his growing terror from him and made a swift study of the currents. The lamb seemed doomed. There was no wading that frightful stream. A log sloped down into the water from the opposite bank, but there was no way to cross. The only hope lay in hurling himself into the torrent, fighting his way to the middle of the stream, seizing the lamb, and swimming with it to safety. The dog could not give aid. The river was a succession of great rocks and treacherous whirlpools, the water was icy cold, and in the darkness a swimmer might easily be swept downstream to his death. Hugh saw all these things plainly. In his own heart he sensed an equal menace in some dim form that waited on the opposite bank to combat him for those few pounds of living flesh. And in that dim light he saw that only a few seconds remained in which to attempt a rescue. The wild waters broke against the rocks between which the lamb lay; and in a few seconds more it would cease its struggles.