a werwolf--she has murdered
both my wife and child, and I am here to demand justice."

"Come inside," M. Tonno said, the tone of his voice suddenly changing.
"We can discuss the matter indoors in the privacy of my study." And he
conducted Max to a room in the rear of the house.

But no sooner had Max crossed the threshold than the door was slammed
on him, and he found himself a prisoner. He turned to the window, but
there was no hope there--it was heavily barred. But although a
peasant--and a fool, so he told himself, to have thus deliberately
walked into a trap--Max was not altogether without wits, and he searched
the room thoroughly, eventually discovering a loose board. Tearing it
up, he saw that the space under the floor--that is to say, between the
floor and the foundation of the house--was just deep enough for him to
lie there at full length. Here, then, was a possible avenue of escape.
Setting to work, he succeeded, after much effort, in wrenching up
another board, and then another, and getting into the excavation thus
made, he worked his way along on his stomach, until he came to a
grating, which, to his utmost joy, proved to be loose. It was but the
work of a few minutes to force it out and to dislodge a few bricks, and
Max was once again free. His one idea now was to tell his tale to his
brother peasants and rouse them to immediate action, and with this end
in view he set off running at full speed to the nearest settlement.

The peasants of Lapland are slow and stolid and take a lot of rousing,
but when once they are roused, few people are so terrible.

Fortunately for Max, he was not the only sufferer; several other people
in the neighbourhood had lately lost their children, and the story he
told found ready credence. In less than an hour a large body of men and
women, armed with every variety of weapon, from a sword to a pitchfork,
had gathered together, and setting off direct to the chateau, they
surrounded it on all sides, and forcing an entrance, seized M. Tonno and
his werwolf wife and werwolf children, and binding them hand and foot,
led them to the shores of Lake Enara and drowned them. They then went
back to the house and, setting fire to it, burned it to the ground, thus
making certain of destroying any werwolf influence it might still
contain.

With this wholesale extermination a case that may be taken as a
characteristic type of Lapland lycanthropy in all its grim and sordid
details concludes