ough the far-off forest,
clanged that iron tongue: and the Wehr-Wolf sped all the faster, as if
he were running a race with that Time whose voice had just spoken.

On, on went the Wehr-Wolf; but now his course began to deviate from the
right line which he had hitherto pursued, and to assume a curved
direction.

From a field a poor man was turning an ox into the main road, that he
might drive the animal to his master's residence by daylight; the wolf
swept by, and snapped furiously at the ox as he passed: and the beast,
affrighted by the sudden appearance, gushing sound, and abrupt though
evanescent attack of the infuriate monster, turned on the herdsman and
gored him to death.

On went the terrific wolf, with wilder and more frequent howlings, which
were answered in a thousand tones from the rocks and caverns overlooking
the valley through whose bosom he was now careering with whirlwind speed
along.

It was now two o'clock in the morning, and he had already described an
immense circuit from the point where he had begun to deviate from a
direct course.

At a turning of the road, as he emerged from the valley, the monster
encountered a party of village girls repairing with the produce of their
dairies, and of their poultry-yards, to some still far distant town,
which they had hoped to reach shortly after daybreak.

Fair, gay, and smiling was the foremost maiden, as the bright moon and
the silver starlight shone upon her countenance; but that sweet face,
clad in the richest hues of health, was suddenly convulsed with horror,
as the terrible Wehr-Wolf thundered by with appalling howls.

For a few moments the foremost village maiden stood rooted to the spot
in speechless horror: then, uttering a wild cry, she fell backward,
rolled down a steep bank, and was ingulfed in the rapid stream that
chafed and fretted along the side of the path.

Her companions shrieked in agony of mind--the wail was echoed by a
despairing cry from the drowning girl--a cry that swept frantically over
the rippling waters; and, in another moment, she sank to rise no more!

The breeze had by this time increased to a sharp wind, icy and cold, as
it usually is, even in southern climes, when the dawn is approaching;
and the gale now whistled through the branches of the evergreen wood in
the neighborhood of Florence--that vicinity to which the Wehr-Wolf was
at length returning!

Still was his pace of arrow-like velocity--for some terrible power