e Lisa with him. She can
sit on a stone and look on,' said Jonas.

'No, she would certainly be frightened,' said Walter, 'and how would
it do for a girl to go wolf-hunting? Come with me, Jonas, and you shall
have the skin, and I will be content with the ears and the tail.'

'No, thank you,' said Jonas, 'Walter can keep the skin for himself. Now
I see quite well that he is frightened. Fie, shame on him!'

This touched Walter's pride very near. 'I shall show that I am not
frightened,' he said; and so he took his drum, sabre, cock's feather,
clasp-knife, pop-gun and air-pistol, and went off quite alone to the
wood to hunt wolves.

It was a beautiful evening, and the birds were singing in all the
branches. Walter went very slowly and cautiously. At every step he
looked all round him to see if perchance there was anything lurking
behind the stones. He quite thought something moved away there in the
ditch. Perhaps it was a wolf. 'It is better for me to beat the drum a
little before I go there,' thought Walter.

Br-r-r, so he began to beat his drum. Then something moved again. Caw!
caw! a crow flew up from the ditch. Walter immediately regained courage.
'It was well I took my drum with me,' he thought, and went straight on
with courageous steps. Very soon he came quite close to the kiln, where
the wolves had killed the ram. But the nearer he came the more dreadful
he thought the kiln looked. It was so gray and old. Who knew how many
wolves there might be hidden there? Perhaps the very ones which killed
the ram were still sitting there in a corner. Yes, it was not at
all safe here, and there were no other people to be seen in the
neighbourhood. It would be horrible to be eaten up here in the daylight,
thought Walter to himself; and the more he thought about it the uglier
and grayer the old kiln looked, and the more horrible and dreadful it
seemed to become the food of wolves.

'Shall I go back and say that I struck one wolf and it escaped?' thought
Walter. 'Fie!' said his conscience, 'Do you not remember that a lie is
one of the worst sins, both in the sight of God and man? If you tell a
lie to-day and say you struck a wolf, to-morrow surely it will eat you
up.'

'No, I will go to the kiln,' thought Walter, and so he went. But he
did not go quite near. He went only so near that he could see the ram's
blood which coloured the grass red, and some tufts of wool which the
wolves had torn from the back of the poor animal.