The wolves that bore down upon Le Beau’s country were red-eyed and thin.  Their bodies were covered with gashes, and the mouths of some frothed blood.  They did not run as wolves run for meat.  They were a sinister and suspicious lot, with a sneaking droop to their haunches, and their cry was not the deep-throated cry of the hunt-pack but a ravening clamour that seemed to have no leadership or cause.  Scarcely was the sound of their tongues gone beyond the hearing of Pierrot’s ears than one of the thin gray beasts rubbed against the shoulder of another, and the second turned with the swiftness of a snake, like the “bad” dog of the traces, and struck his fangs deep into the first wolf’s flesh.  Could Pierrot have seen, he would have understood then how the four he had found had come to their end.

Swift as the snap of a whip-lash the fight between the two was on.  The other twelve of the pack stopped.  They came back, circling in cautiously and grimly silent about their fighting comrades.  They ranged themselves in a ring, as men gather about a fistic battle; and there they waited, their jaws drooling, their fangs clicking, a low and eager whining smothered in their throats.  And then the thing happened.  One of the fighting wolves went down.  He was on his back—­and the end came.  The twelve wolves were upon him as one, and, like those Pierrot had seen, he was torn to pieces, and his flesh devoured.  After that the thirteen went on deeper into Le Beau’s country.

Miki heard them again, after that hour’s interval of silence.  Farther and farther he had wandered from the forest.  He had crossed the “burn,” and was in the open plain, with the rough ridges cutting through and the big river at the edge of it.  It was not so gloomy out here, and his loneliness weighed upon him less heavily than in the deep timber.

And across this plain came the voice of the wolves.

He did not move away from it to-night.  He waited, silhouetted against the vivid starlight at the crest of a rocky knoll, and the top of this knoll was so small that another could not have stood beside him without their shoulders touching.  On all sides of him the plain swept away in the white light of the stars and moon; never had the desire to respond to the wild brethren urged itself upon him more fiercely than now.  He flung back his head, until his black-tipped muzzle pointed up to the stars, and the voice rolled out of his throat.  But it was only half a howl.  Even then, oppressed by his great loneliness, there gripped him that something instinctive which warned him against betrayal.  After that he remained quiet, and as the wolves drew nearer his body grew tense, his muscles hardened, and in his throat there was the low whispering of a snarl instead of a howl.  He sensed danger.  He had caught, in the voice of the wolves, the ravening note that had made Pierrot cross himself and mutter of the loups-garous, and he crouched down on his belly at the top of the rocky mound.