His mind was full of confused thoughts as he fared through the forest, and how long he had been walking he knew not when suddenly he heard a whistling twang, and an arrow speeding close past his head lodged in a tree not a foot from him. Turning quick as flash, his eye caught sight of a fleeing figure beyond the nearest trees, and without an instant’s halt Wulf sped after the runner. He was fleet of foot, and not many moments was it ere he was up with his cowardly foe, and catching him by the shoulder with one strong hand, he whirled the fellow about and stood face to face with Conradt. The hunchback had thrown away his bow and arrows the better to run, and now put hand to sword; but ere he could draw, Wulf put forth one long leg and tripped him up, so that he lay upon his back on the turf, glaring up at Wulf, whose face glowed with unwonted anger and whose sword’s point was at the breast of the prostrate ill-doer. “Thou again?” he asked, when he had looked Conradt well over. “And what wouldst have this time? What thou’rt likely to get is a quick shriving,” he added. There was no reply. “What wast after?” Wulf persisted. “Thy life,” was the defiant answer. “To let thy tinker blood out—and to get the ribband ye stole.” “Softly,” the other said. “That were an ugly word an any one heard it. My life thou’rt not likely to get; as for the ribband, ’tis as much mine as the other, and I am minded to keep both.” Conradt’s only reply was a muttered curse; but his eyes rolled shiftily, glancing askance adown the woods, as seeking help. “If thou’rt looking for thy cutthroats,” Wulf said, “they’re back at the forge, and likely to stay there an hour or so yet. Meantime, my pretty fellow,” he asked wrathfully, “what shall I do to thee?” A look of sullen despair crept over the hunchback’s face. “Thou’lt do what is in thee,” he snarled at last—“as I did with thee.” Wulf raised his sword; but looking down upon the fellow who would have slain him, he saw his ill-shapen body and distorted face, and noted the lurking fear in his restless eyes, and because it was in him to be pitiful and generous, his heart stirred with compassion, and he could not smite the creature lying there. Slowly his hands fell until the point of his sword rested upon the ground; then he spurned the figure lightly with his toe. “Get thee up and be off,” he said. “An thou bidest long here, it may not go so well with thee, after all.” Rolling over upon his face, Conradt sprang to his feet and slunk away, curlike, into the forest. His life had been spared, but the beast that dwelt within his bad heart was not tamed. He had been given another chance, such as the strong may give the weak, whether the weakness be of body or of soul, so the strong yet ward his own strength; but this he was too base to know, but deemed that fear had held Wulf’s hand; so that he was not helped at all by the mercy that had spared him.