h he carried in his breast, and was, in Russian
fashion as I think, confessing his sins over it; while his sister sat
silent and motionless by the fire, with livid face and clasped hands.
It was burning low, but I saw the woodman's face darken. He stepped to
the corner and took down his gun, as I believed, to take the last shot
at the wolves; but Count Theodore was in his way. He levelled it for
an instant at the prostrate man, and before I could speak or
interpose, the report, followed by a faint shrill shriek from the
Russian, rang through the hut. We rushed to him, but the count was
dead. A bullet had gone right through the heart.

'My gun has shot the count, and the wolves will leave us now,' said
Wenzel coolly. 'I heard him say in his prayers that a Finn, now in the
Siberian mines, had vowed to send them on him and his company wherever
he went.'

As the woodman spoke, he handed to Count Emerich, with a hoarse
whisper, a bloody pocket-book, taken from the dead body, and turning
to Juana, said something loud and threatening to her in the Russian
tongue; at which the lady only bowed her head, seeming of all in the
hut to be the least surprised or concerned at the death of her
brother. As for us, the complicated horrors of the night had left us
stunned and stupified till the rapid diminution of the wolfish din,
the sounds of shots and voices, and the glare of flambeaux lighting up
the forest, brought most of us to the window. The wolves were scouring
away in all directions, there was a grayness in the eastern sky, for
Christmas-day was breaking; and from all sides the count and my
uncle's tenantry, with skates and sledges, guns and torches, were
pouring to the rescue as we shouted to them from the cottage.

They had searched for us almost since midnight, fearing that something
terrible had detained Father Cassimer and his company from mass. There
were wonderfully few wolves shot in the retreat, and we all went home
to Count Emerich's house, but not in triumph, for with us went the
body of the Russian, of which old Wenzel was one of the bearers. The
unanimous determination we expressed to bring him to justice as a
murderer, was silenced when Emerich shewed us in confidence a letter
from the Russian minister, and a paper with all our names in a list of
the disaffected in Upper Lithuania, which he had found in Theodore's
pocket-book. After that, we all affirmed that Wenzel's gun had gone
off by accident; and on the sam