and through swamps, under ferns that were thickly
matted together, and past wide lakes. And every step they took brought
them further away from the bears, who were lying snugly in their den.

* * * * *

At last even the patience of the emperor was exhausted. He gave up the
hunt, and bade his men call off the dogs and go home.

'They have escaped me this time,' said he, 'but I will have them
by-and-by. Let a reward be offered, and posted up on the gate of every
city. After all, that is the surest way of capturing them.'

And the emperor was right: the shepherds and goatherds were told that if
they could bring the two white bears to the gates of the palace they
would not need to work for the rest of their lives, and they kept a
sharp look-out as they followed their flocks. Once a man actually saw
them, and gave notice to one of the royal officials, who brought a
company of spearmen and surrounded the cave. Another moment, and they
would have been seized, had not the wolf again come to their rescue. He
leapt out from behind a rock, and snatched up the officer's son, who had
followed his father. The poor man shrieked in horror, and cried out to
save the boy, so they all turned and went after the wolf as before.

'We are safer now in our own clothes,' said William; and they hastily
stripped off the bearskins, and stole away, but they would not leave the
skins behind, for they had learnt to love them.

For a long while they wandered through the forest, the werwolf ever
watching over them, and bringing them food. At length the news spread
abroad, no one knew how, that William and Melior were running about as
bears no more, but in the garments they always wore. So men began to
look out for them, and once they were very nearly caught by some
charcoal-burners. Then the wolf killed a hart and a hind, and sewed them
in their skins and guided them across the Straits of Messina into the
kingdom of Sicily.

Very dimly, and one by one, little things that had happened in his
childhood began to come back to William; but he wondered greatly how he
seemed to know this land, where he had never been before. The king his
father had been long dead, but the queen (his mother) and his sister
were besieged in the city of Palermo by the king of Spain, who was full
of wrath because the princess had refused to marry his son. The queen
was in great straits, when one night she dreamed that a wolf and two
harts ha