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It was a rapid pattering growing louder and coming towards her, and in a
little while she could hear grunting noises and the snapping of twigs.
It was a drove of lean grisly wild swine. She turned about her, for a
boar is an ill fellow to pass too closely, on account of the sideway
slash of his tusks, and she made off slantingly through the trees. But
the patter came nearer, they were not feeding as they wandered, but
going fast--or else they would not overtake her--and she caught the limb
of a tree, swung on to it, and ran up the stem with something of the
agility of a monkey.
Down below the sharp bristling backs of the swine were already passing
when she looked. And she knew the short, sharp grunts they made meant
fear. What were they afraid of? A man? They were in a great hurry for
just a man.
And then, so suddenly it made her grip on the branch tighten
involuntarily, a fawn started in the brake and rushed after the swine.
Something else went by, low and grey, with a long body; she did not know
what it was, indeed she saw it only momentarily through the interstices
of the young leaves; and then there came a pause.
She remained stiff and expectant, as rigid almost as though she was a
part of the tree she clung to, peering down.
Then, far away among the trees, clear for a moment, then hidden, then
visible knee-deep in ferns, then gone again, ran a man. She knew it was
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