l 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, tearing 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 showed 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 same good Christmas-day, Count Emerich, with a body of his
retainers, escorted the Lady Juana to a convent at the other end of the
province, the superior of which was his aunt. There she became a true
Catholic, professed, and, as I was told, turned to a great saint. There
is a wooden cross with his name, and a Latin inscription on it, marking
Count Theodore's grave, by our old church on the edge of the forest.

No one ever inquired after him, and the company of that terrible night
are far scattered. My uncle and his sons all died for the poor country.
The young cousins are married to German doctors in Berlin. Constanza and
her brother are still single, for aught I know, but they have been
exiles in America these fifteen years. Father Cassimer went with them,
after being colonel of a regiment which saw hard service on the banks of
the Vistula; and it may be that he is still saying mass or hunting
occasionally in the Far West.

The last time I saw Wenzel and Metski was in the trenches at Minsk,
where they had a tough debate regarding our adventure in the forest: the
woodman insisting it was the Finn's spell that brought the wolves in
such unheard-of numbers, and the peasant maintaining that it was a
judgment on our desecration of Christmas-eve. For my own part, I think
the long storm, and a great scarcity of food had something to do with
it, for tales of the kind were never wanting in our province. The
wolf-gathering, however, saved us a journey to Siberia: thanks to old
Wenzel. And sometimes yet, when any strange noise breaks in upon my
sleep even here in England