ck, we might be up with her before the daylight is gone."

"Let us hope so, Gideon."

"Oh, don't think of it. The old she-wolf is always moving; she never
tires; she tramps along all the hollows in the Black Forest. We must not
flatter ourselves with vain hopes. If, perhaps, she has stopped on her
journey, so much the better for us; and if she still keeps going, we
won't let that discourage us. Come on at a gallop."

It is a very strange feeling to be hunting down a fellow-creature; for,
after all, that unhappy woman was of our own kind and nature; endowed
like ourselves with an immortal soul to be saved, she felt, and thought,
and reflected like ourselves. It is true that a strange perversion
of human nature had brought her near to the nature of the wolf, and that
some great mystery overshadowed her being. No doubt a wandering life had
obliterated the moral sense in her, and even almost effaced the human
character; but still nothing in the world can give one man a right to
exercise over another the dominion of the man over the brute.

And yet a burning ardour hurried us on in pursuit; my blood was at fever
heat; I was determined to stand at no obstacle in laying hold of this
extraordinary being. A wolf-hunt or a boar-hunt would not have excited me
near so much.

The snow was flying in our rear; sometimes splinters of ice, bitten off
by the horse-shoes, like shavings of iron from machinery, whizzed past
our ears.

Sperver, sometimes with his nose in the air and his red moustache
floating in the wind, sometimes with his grey eyes intently following
the track, reminded me of those famous Cossacks that I had seen pass
through Germany when I was a boy; and his tall, lanky horse, muscular and
full-maned, its body as slender as a greyhound's, completed the illusion.

Lieverle, in a high state of enthusiasm and excitement, took bounds
sometimes as high as our horses' backs, and I could not but tremble at
the thought that when we came up at last with the Pest he might tear her
in pieces before we could prevent him.

But the old woman gave us all the trouble she could; on every hill she
doubled, at every hillock there was a false track.

"After all, it is easy here," cried Sperver, "to what it will be in the
wood. We shall have to keep our eyes open there! Do you see the accursed
beast? Here she has confused the track! There she has been amusing
herself sweeping the trail, and then from that height which is exposed to