It is quite impossible (though Mahan and Vivier used to swear it must be true) that Bruce had the reasoning powers to figure out the whole situation which confronted him.  He could not have known that a German brigade had been sent to take advantage of the “Here-We-Comes” temporarily isolated position—­that three sentries had been killed in silence and that their deaths had left a wide gap through which the brigade hoped to creep unobserved until they should be within striking distance of their unsuspectingly slumbering victims.

Bruce could not have known this.  He could not have grasped the slightest fraction of the idea, being only a real-life dog and not a fairytale animal.  But what he could and did realize was that a mass of detested Germans was moving toward him, and that he could not hope to attack them, single-handed; also, that he was not minded to slink peacefully away and leave his friend unavenged.

Thwarted rage dragged from his furry throat a deep growl; a growl that resounded eerily through that silent place of stealthy moves.  And he stepped majestically forth from the surrounding long grass, into the full glare of moonlight.

The deceptive glow made him loom gigantic and black, and tinged his snowy chest with the phosphorous gleam of a snowfield.  His eyes shone like a wild beast’s.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Corporal Rudolph Freund, of the Konigin Luise Regiment, had just finished his three-word report to his superior.  He had merely saluted and announced

“He is dead!”

Corporal Freund did not thrill, as usual, to the colonel’s grunt of approval.  The Corporal was worried.  He was a Black Forest peasant; and, while iron military life had dulled his native superstitions, it had not dispelled them.

The night was mystic, in its odd blend of moon and shadows.  However hardened one may be, it is a nerve-strain to creep through long grass, like a red Indian, to the murder of a hostile sentinel.  And every German in the “Pocket” had been under frightful mental and physical stress, for the past week.

Corporal Rudolph Freund was a brave man and a brute.  But that week had sapped his nerve.  And the work of this night had been the climax.  The desolate ground, over which he had crawled to the killing, had suddenly seemed peopled with evil gnomes and goblins, whose existence no true Black Forest peasant can doubt.  And, on the run back, he had been certain he heard some unseen monster tearing through the underbrush in hot pursuit of him.  So certain had he been, that he had redoubled his speed.

There were no wolves or other large wild animals in that region.  When he had wriggled toward the slow-pacing American sentinel, he had seen and heard no creature of any sort.  Yet he was sure that on the way back he had been pursued by—­by Something!  And into his scared memory, as he ran, had flashed the ofttold Black Forest tale of the Werewolf—­the devil—­beast that is entered by the soul of a murdered man and which tracks the murderer to his death.