The bravest among us got terrified at
these sounds. Metski loudly avowed his belief that the wolves were sent
upon us as a punishment for hunting on Christmas-eve, and fell instantly
to his prayers. Wenzel flung a blazing brand among them from the window,
but they did not seem to care for fire; and three of them were so near
leaping in, that he drove to the log-shutter and gave up that method of
defence. None of the party appeared so far overcome with terror as Count
Theodore: his spirit and prudence both seemed to forsake him. When the
wolves began to scratch, he threw himself almost on his face in the
corner, and kept moaning and praying in Russian, of which none of us
understood a syllable but old Wenzel. Emerich and I would have spoken to
him, but the woodman stopped us with a strange sign. Count Theodore had
taken the relic of some saint from a pocket-book which 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 stupefied 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 al