ecease, which occurred when he was a child, his mother had
married a Russian trader, who, when she died, carried the boy to
Moscow. There Wenzel bade fair to be brought up a Russian; but when a
stepmother came home, which took place while he was still a youth, he
had returned to his native country, built himself a hut in the woods
of Lithuania, and lived a lonely hunter till the time of my story,
when he was still a robust, though gray-haired man. Some said his
Muscovite parents had not been to his liking; some that he had found
cause to shoot a master to whom they apprenticed him at Moscow; but be
that as it might, Wenzel hated the Russians with all his heart, and
never scrupled to say that the gun which had served him so long would
serve the country too if it ever came to a rising. So much for
Wenzel's story, by way of explaining what followed; but as I stood
beside him that night at the hut's single crevice of a window, I could
have given Poland itself for ammunition enough to do service on the
wolves. They had now left nothing but the bones of our horses, which
they had dragged round and round the cottage, with a din of howlings
that almost drowned our voices within. Then they seized on the bodies
of their own slain companions, which were devoured to the very skins;
and still the gathering was going on. We could see them coming in
troops through the open glades of the forest, as if aware that some
human prey was in reserve. The hut was strongly built of great
pine-logs, but it was fearful to hear them tearing at the door and
scratching up the foundations. The bravest among us got terrified at
these sounds. Metski loudly avowed his belief that the wolves were
sent upon us as a punishment for hunting on Christmas-eve, and fell
instantly to his prayers. Wenzel flung a blazing brand among them from
the window, but they did not seem to care for fire; and three of them
were so near leaping in, that he drove to the log-shutter and gave up
that method of defence. None of the party appeared so far overcome
with terror as Count Theodore: his spirit and prudence both seemed to
forsake him. When the wolves began to scratch, he threw himself almost
on his face in the corner, and kept moaning and praying in Russian, of
which none of us understood a syllable but old Wenzel. Emerich and I
would have spoken to him, but the woodman stopped us with a strange
sign. Count Theodore had taken the relic of some saint from a
pocket-book whic