ng, their horses
suddenly came to a standstill and appeared to be very much frightened.
They inquired of the driver the reason of such strange behaviour, and he
pointed with his whip to a spot on the ice--they were then crossing a
frozen lake--a few feet ahead of them. They got out of the sleigh, and,
approaching the spot indicated, found the body of a peasant lying on his
back, his throat gnawed away and all his entrails gone. "A wolf without
a doubt," they said, and getting back into the sleigh, they drove on,
taking good care to see that their rifles were ready for instant action.
They had barely gone a mile when the horses again halted, and a second
corpse was discovered, the corpse of a child with its face and thighs
entirely eaten away. Again they drove on, and had progressed a few more
miles when the horses stopped so abruptly that the driver was pitched
bodily out; and before Carl and Hans could dismount, the brutes started
off at a wild gallop. They were eventually got under control, but it was
with the greatest difficulty that they were forced to turn round and go
back, in order to pick up the unfortunate driver. The farther they went,
the more restless they became, and when, at length, they approached the
place where the driver had been thrown, they came to a sudden and
resolute standstill. As no amount of whipping would now make them go on,
Hans got out, and advancing a few steps, espied something lying across
the track some little distance ahead of them. Gun in hand, he advanced
a few more steps, when he suddenly stopped. To his utter amazement he
saw, bending over a body, which he at once identified as that of their
driver, the figure of a woman. She started as he approached, and,
hastily springing up, turned towards him. The strange beauty of her
face, her long, lithe limbs (she stood fully six feet high) and slender
body,--the beauty of the latter enhanced by the white woollen costume in
which she was clad,--had an extraordinary effect upon Hans. Her shining
masses of golden hair, that curled in thick clusters over her forehead
and about her ears; the perfect regularity of her features, and the
lustrous blue of her eyes, enraptured him; whilst the expression both in
her face and figure--in her sparkling eyes and firmly modelled mouth; in
her red lips, and even in her pearly teeth, repulsed and almost
frightened him. He gazed steadily at her, and, as he did so, the hold on
his rifle involuntarily tightened.