Within the chamber of La Meffraye there was silence.  Sholto could not even hear the heavy breathing of Caesar Martin.  The silence was complete.

Suddenly, from far away, there came up the howling of a wolf.  It was not an uncommon sound in the forests of France, or even in those of his own country, yet somehow Sholto listened with a growing dread.  Nearer and nearer it came, till it seemed to reverberate immediately beneath the eaves of the dwelling of Caesar the cripple.

The flicker of the embers died slowly out.  Malise lay without a sound, his head couched on his hand.  Lord James began to groan and move uneasily, like one in the grip of nightmare.  Sholto listened yet more acutely.  Outside the house he could hear the soft pad-pad of wild animals.  Their pelts seemed almost to brush against the wooden walls behind his head with a rustle like that of corded silk.  Sholto felt nervously for his sword and cleared it instinctively of the coverture in which he was wrapped.  Expectation tingled in his cheeks and palms.  The silence grew more and more oppressive.  He could hear nothing but that soft brushing and the galloping pads outside, as of something that went round and round the house, weaving a coil of terror and death about the doomed inmates.

Suddenly from the adjoining chamber a cry burst forth, so shrill and terrible that not only Sholto but Malise also leaped to his feet.

“Mercy—­mercy!  Have mercy, La Meffraye!” it wailed.

Sholto rushed across the floor, striding the body of James Douglas in his haste.  He dashed the door of the inner chamber open and was just in time to see something dark and lithe dart through the window and disappear into the indigo gloom without.  From the bed there came a series of gasping moans, as from a man at the point of death.

“For God’s sake bring a light!” cried Sholto, “there is black murder done here.”

His father ran to the hearth, and, seizing a birchen brand, the end of which was still red, he blew upon it with care and success so that it burst into a white brilliant flame that lighted all the house.  Then he, too, entered the room where Sholto, with his sword ready in his hand, was standing over the gasping, dying thing on the bed.

When Malise thrust forward his torch, lo! there, extended on the couch to which they had carried him two hours before, lay the yet twitching body of Caesar the cripple with his throat well nigh bitten away.

But La Meffraye was nowhere to be seen.

CHAPTER XLIX

THE BATTLE WITH THE WERE-WOLVES

“Let us get out of this hellish place,” cried James Douglas so soon as he had seen with his eyes that which lay within the bedchamber of the witch woman, and made certain that it was all over with Caesar Martin.

So the three men issued out into the gloom of the night, and made their way to the stable wherein they had disposed their horses so carefully the night before.