Soon we were hemmed in with trees, which in places arched right over the roadway till we passed as through a tunnel.  And again great frowning rocks guarded us boldly on either side.  Though we were in shelter, we could hear the rising wind, for it moaned and whistled through the rocks, and the branches of the trees crashed together as we swept along.  It grew colder and colder still, and fine, powdery snow began to fall, so that soon we and all around us were covered with a white blanket.  The keen wind still carried the howling of the dogs, though this grew fainter as we went on our way.  The baying of the wolves sounded nearer and nearer, as though they were closing round on us from every side.  I grew dreadfully afraid, and the horses shared my fear.  The driver, however, was not in the least disturbed.  He kept turning his head to left and right, but I could not see anything through the darkness.

Suddenly, away on our left I saw a faint flickering blue flame.  The driver saw it at the same moment.  He at once checked the horses, and, jumping to the ground, disappeared into the darkness.  I did not know what to do, the less as the howling of the wolves grew closer.  But while I wondered, the driver suddenly appeared again, and without a word took his seat, and we resumed our journey.  I think I must have fallen asleep and kept dreaming of the incident, for it seemed to be repeated endlessly, and now looking back, it is like a sort of awful nightmare.  Once the flame appeared so near the road, that even in the darkness around us I could watch the driver’s motions.  He went rapidly to where the blue flame arose, it must have been very faint, for it did not seem to illumine the place around it at all, and gathering a few stones, formed them into some device.

Once there appeared a strange optical effect.  When he stood between me and the flame he did not obstruct it, for I could see its ghostly flicker all the same.  This startled me, but as the effect was only momentary, I took it that my eyes deceived me straining through the darkness.  Then for a time there were no blue flames, and we sped onwards through the gloom, with the howling of the wolves around us, as though they were following in a moving circle.

At last there came a time when the driver went further afield than he had yet gone, and during his absence, the horses began to tremble worse than ever and to snort and scream with fright.  I could not see any cause for it, for the howling of the wolves had ceased altogether.  But just then the moon, sailing through the black clouds, appeared behind the jagged crest of a beetling, pine-clad rock, and by its light I saw around us a ring of wolves, with white teeth and lolling red tongues, with long, sinewy limbs and shaggy hair.  They were a hundred times more terrible in the grim silence which held them than even when they howled.  For myself, I felt a sort of paralysis of fear.  It is only when a man feels himself face to face with such horrors that he can understand their true import.