"For all that are in agony and have none to pray for them, I beseech thee, O God!" And I meant the priest, as well as some others.

But, however it was, I heard I mean I saw

no

more of him. I had never heard of him so much as his

name.

Christmas passed. In February I went down to the village, and there I heard what put the faint memory of the lame man out of my head. The wolves who had followed the red deer were killing, not deer in the woods, but children in the settlements. The village talked of packs of wolves, and Heaven knew how many children. I thought, if it came to bare truth, there might have been three children eaten, instead of the thirty rumor made them, and that for the fabled pack there probably stood two or three brutes, with a taste for human flesh, and a distaste for the hard running of pulling down a deer. And before I left the village I met a man who told the plain tale.

There had been ten children killed or carried off, but there had been no pack of wolves concerned, nor even three nor two. One lame wolf's track led from each robbed house, only to disappear on some highroad. More than that, the few wolves in the woods seemed to fear and shun the lonely murderer; were against him as much as the men who meant to hunt him down.

It was a queer story; I hardly thought it held water, though the man who told it was no romance-maker. I left him, and went home over the hard shining of the crusted snow, wondering why the good God, if he had not meant his children to kill, should have made the winter so long and hard.

Yellow shafts of low sunlight pierced the woods as I threaded them, and if they had not made it plain that there was nothing abroad I should have thought I heard something padding in the underbrush. But I saw nothing till I came out on my own clearing, and there I jerked up with surprise.

The lame priest stood with his back to my windowstood on a patch of tramped and bloody snow.

"Will you never learn sense?" he whined at me. "This is no winter to go out and leave your window unfastened. If I had not happened by, your dog would be dead."

I stared at him. I always left the window ajar, for the dog to go out and in.

"I came by," drawled the priest, as if he were passing every day, "and found your dog out here with three wolves on him. I-I beat them off." He might speak calmly, but he wiped the sweat from his face. "I put him in by the window. He is only torn.”

"But you My wits came back to me. I thanked him as a man does who has only a dumb beast to cherish. "Why did you not go in, too? You must be frozen."

He shook his head. "The dog is afraid of me; you saw that,” he answered simply. “He was better alone. Besides, I had my hands full at the time."

"Are you hurt?”

I would have felt his ragged clothes, but he flinched away from me.

"They were afraid, too!" He gave a short laugh. "And now I must go. Only be careful. For all you knew, there might have been wolves beside you as you came. And you had no gun."

I knew now why he looked neither cold nor like a man who has been waiting. He had made the windows safe for the dog inside, and run through the woods to guard me. I was full of wonder at the strangeness of him, and the absurd gratitude; I forgot -—or rather, I did not speak of the stolen map. I begged him to come in for the night. But he cut me off in the middle.

"I am going a long way. No, I will not take a gun. I have no fear.”

"These wolves are too much!" I cried angrily. "They told me in the village that a lame one had been harrying the settlements. I mean a wolf" Not for worlds would I have said anything about lameness if I had remembered his.

"Do they say that?" he asked, his gaunt and furrowed face without expression. "Oh, you need not mind me. It is no secret that I — I too am lame. Are they sure?"

"Sure enough to mean to kill him." Somehow, my tongue faltered over it.

66

"So they ought." He spoke in his throat. "But-I doubt if they can!" He straightened himself, looked at the sun with a queer face. "I must be going. You need not thank me except, if there comes one at nightfall, do not, for my memory, let him in. Good-night, brother."

And, "Good-night, brother," said I.

He turned, and drifted lamely out of the clearing. He was out of my sight as quickly as if he had gone into the ground. It was true about the wolves: there were their three tracks, and the priest's tracks running to the place where they had my dog down. If, remembering the hare

I had had other thoughts, I was ashamed of them. I was sorry I had not asked in the village about this strange man who beat off wolves with a stick; but I had, unfortunately, not known it in the village.

I was to know. Oh, I was to know!

It may have been a month after · it was near sunset of a bitter day when I saw the lame priest again. Lame indeed. Bent double as if with agony, limping horribly, the sweat on his white face, he stumbled to my door. His hand was at his side; there was a dry bloodstain round his mouth; yet even while he had to lean against the doorpost he would not let me within arm reach of him, but edged away.

"Come in, man." I was appalled. "Come in. Youare you hurt?” I thought I saw blood on his soutane, which was in flinders.

He shook his head. Like a man whose minutes are numbered, he looked at the sun; and, like a man whose minutes are numbered, could not hurry his speech.

"Not I," he said at last. "But there is a poor beast out there," nodding vaguely, "a-a dog, that has been wounded. I-I want some rags to tie up the wound, a blanket to put over him. I cannot leave him in his his last hour."

"You can't go. I'll put him out of his misery: that will be better than blankets.”

"It might," muttered he, “it might, if you could! But I must go."

I said I would go, too. But at that he seemed to lose all control of himself, and snarled out at me.

"Stay at home. I will not have you. Hurry. Get me the things."

His eyes and, on my soul, I thought death was glazing them were on the sinking sun when I came out again, and for the first time he did not edge away from me. I should have known without telling that he had been caring for some animal by the smell of his clothes.

"My brother that I have treated brotherly, as you me," he said, "whether I come back this night or not, keep your door shut. Do not come out — if I had strength to kneel, I would kneel to you for any calling. And I, I that ask you have loved you well; I have tried to serve you, except" (he had no pause, no awkwardness) "in the matter of that map; but you had burned the heathen charm, and I had to find a way to keep far off from you. I am I am a driven man!"

"There will be no calling." I was puzzled and despairing. "There has been none of that loon-crying, or whatever it was, since the night I first met you. If you would treat me as a brother, come back to my house and sleep. I will not hurt your wounded dog," though even then I knew it was no dog.

"I treat you as I know best," he answered passionately. "But if in the morning I do not come " He seized the blanket, the rags; bounded from me in the last rays of sunlight, dragging his burden in the snow. As he vanished with his swift, incredible lameness, his voice came back high and shrill: "If I do not come in the morning, come out and give - give my dog burial. For the love of" — he was screaming "for the love I bore you

Christian burial!"

If I had not stayed to shut the door, I should not have lost him. Until dark I called, I beat every inch of cover.