the mountainous regions of Austria-Hungary and the Balkan Peninsula
are certain flowers credited with the property of converting into
werwolves whoever plucks and wears them. Needless to say, these flowers
are very rare, but I have heard of their having been found,
comparatively recently, both in the Transylvanian Alps and the Balkans.
A story _a propos_ of one of these discoveries was told me last summer.

Ivan and Olga were the children of Otto and Vera Kloska--the former a
storekeeper of Kerovitch, a village on the Roumanian side of the
Transylvanian Alps. One morning they were out with their mother,
watching her wash clothes in a brook at the back of their house, when,
getting tired of their occupation, they wandered into a thicket.

"Let's make a chaplet of flowers," Olga said, plucking a daisy. "You
gather the flowers and I'll weave them together."

"It's not much of a game," Ivan grumbled, "but I can't think of anything
more exciting just now, so I'll play it. But let's both make wreaths and
see which makes the best."

To this Olga agreed, and they were soon busily hunting amidst the grass
and undergrowth, and scrambling into all sorts of possible and
impossible places.

Presently Ivan heard a scream, followed by a heavy thud, and running in
the direction of the noise, narrowly avoided falling into a pit, the
sides of which were partly overgrown with weeds and brambles.

"It's all right," Olga shouted; "I'm not hurt. I landed on soft ground.
It's not very deep, and there's such a queer flower here--I don't know
what it is; I've never seen one like it before."

Ivan's curiosity thus aroused, he carefully examined the sides of the
pit, and, selecting the shallowest spot, lowered himself slowly over and
then dropped. It was nothing of a distance, seven or eight feet at the
most, and he alighted without mishap on a clump of rank, luxuriant
grass. "See! here it is," his sister cried, pointing to a large, very
vivid white flower, shaped something like a sunflower, but soft and
pulpy, and full of a sweet, nauseating odour. "It's too big to put in a
wreath, so I'll wear it in my buttonhole."

"Better not," Ivan said, snatching it from her; "I don't like it. It's a
nasty-looking thing. I believe it's a sort of fungus."

Olga then began to cry, and as Ivan was desirous of keeping the peace,
he gave her back the flower. She was a prepossessing child, with black
hair and large dark eyes, pretty teeth and plump, sunb