hether I was frightened. Then I felt
that I could not take my eyes away from the ditch. My eyelids had
become so stiff that I thought I should never be able to close them
again. I wanted to call out, so that they should hear me at the farm,
but I could not get my voice out of my throat. I wanted to run, but my
legs were trembling so that I was obliged to sit down on the wet grass.
Castille went on howling as though she were in pain, and the sheep
remained huddled together.

When I got them back to the farm at last, I ran to look for Master
Silvain. As soon as he saw me he guessed what had happened. He called
his brother and took down their two guns, and I tried to show him which
way the wolf had gone. They both came back at nightfall without having
found him. We talked of nothing else all the evening. Eugene wanted
to know what the wolf looked like; and old Bibiche got angry when I
said that he had a long yellow coat like Castille, but that he was much
handsomer than she was.

A few days afterwards it was Martine's turn. She had just taken her
sheep out, and she had hardly reached the end of the avenue of chestnut
trees when we heard her shouting. Everybody rushed out of the house.
I got to Martine first. She was stooping down and pulling as hard as
she could at a sheep which a wolf had just killed, and was trying to
carry off. The wolf had the sheep by the throat, and was pulling as
hard as Martine was. Martine's dog bit the wolf's legs, but he didn't
seem to feel it, and when Master Silvain fired full at him he rolled
over with a piece of the sheep's throat between his teeth. Martine's
eyes were staring and her mouth had become quite white. Her cap had
slipped off her head, and the parting which divided her hair into two
made me think of a broad path on which one could walk without any
danger. The usual strong expression of her face had changed into a sad
little grimace, and her hands kept opening and closing, the two of them
keeping time. She had been leaning against the chestnut tree, and she
went up to Eugene, who was looking at the wolf. She stood by him for a
moment looking at the dead wolf too, and said aloud: "Poor brute! How
hungry he must have been!" The farmer put the wolf and the sheep on
the same wheelbarrow, and wheeled them back to the farm. The dogs
followed, sniffing at the barrow, and looking frightened.

For several days the farmer and his brother went out shooting in th