. You are below the standard of a beast--of the Vargamor you
slew. Go! go back to those parents who bore you, and tell them I'll have
nought to do with you--that I want a woman for my wife, not a
monstrosity."

He bade the coachman pull up, and, alighting, told the man to drive Liso
to the home of her parents.

But Liso did not hear him--she sat huddled up on the seat with her eyes
staring blankly before her. For the first time in her life she was
conscious that she loved!

CHAPTER XVI

WERWOLVES IN ICELAND, LAPLAND, AND FINLAND

The Bersekir of Iceland are credited with the rare property of dual
metamorphosis--that is to say, they are credited with the power of being
able to adopt the individual forms of two animals--the bear and the
wolf.

For substantiation as to the _bona-fide_ existence of this rare property
of dual metamorphosis one has only to refer to the historical literature
of the country (the authenticity of which is beyond dispute), wherein
many cases of it are recorded.

The following story, illustrative of dual metamorphosis, was told to me
on fairly good authority.

A very unprepossessing Bersekir, named Rerir, falling in love with
Signi, the beautiful daughter of a neighbouring Bersekir, proposed to
her and was scornfully rejected. Smarting under the many insults that
had been heaped on him--for Signi had a most cutting tongue--Rerir, who,
like most of the Bersekir, was both a werwolf and a wer-bear, resolved
to be revenged. Assuming the shape of a bear--the animal he deemed the
more formidable--Rerir stole to the house where Signi and her parents
lived, and climbing on the roof, tore away at it with his claws till he
had made a hole big enough to admit him. Dropping through the aperture
he had thus effected, he alighted on the top of some one in bed--one of
the servants of the house--whom he hugged to death before she had time
to utter a cry. He then stole out into the passage and made his way,
cautiously and noiselessly, to the room in which he imagined Signi
slept. Here, however, instead of finding the object of his passions, he
came upon her parents, one of whom--the mother--was awake; and aiming a
blow at the latter's head, he crushed in her skull with one stroke of
his powerful paw. The noise awoke Signi's father, who, taking in the
situation at a glance, also metamorphosed into a bear and straightway
closed with his assailant. A desperate encounter between the two
wer-animals n