To others Padraig might seem an unruly spirit, neither to command nor to coax, but the word of Brother Basil was his law and his gospel.  He began to draw new figures on fresh parchment, but he could not quite put out of his mind the unlooked-for fate of his wolf.  Current gossip often gave hints for the work of the illuminators, and he knew the work had been good.

It was plain enough that Brother Basil was in one of his absent-minded fits.  There was no beguiling him into talk at such times.  If any of those under his direction presumed upon his mood to do careless or ill-judged work, they found his eye as keen and his word as ready as usual.  But his mind—­his real self—­was not there.  Padraig wondered whether this could have any connection with the unlucky picture.

Next day there was deeper concern in the scriptorium.  Brother Basil was not present at all.  The work went on under Brother Mark, the librarian, but the heart of it was not the same.  The untiring patience, brilliant imagination and high ideals of the man who was not only their master but their friend, had made him the soul of the little group of artists.  He could not be away for a morning without every one feeling the difference.  At times he had gone afield for a day or even longer, searching for balsams, pigments, minerals and other things needed for the work, but he had nearly always taken Padraig with him.  This time he had gone alone.

Padraig was as curious as a squirrel and as determined as a mink, and he wished very much to know what this meant.  He did not exactly believe the werewolf story, although it had so impressed him that he could not help making the picture; but he did not like to think of it in connection with the mysterious absence of Brother Basil.  A priest of the Church might be able to defy a loup-garou, but if the wolves were real ones they might not know him from any ordinary man.

There is no land so full of fairy-lore and half-forgotten legends as Ireland.  Princes in their painted halls and slaves in their mud cabins listened to the shanachies or wandering story-tellers, with wonder, terror and delight.  Cluricaunes, banshees, giants, witches, monsters, pookas and the little red-capped people of the fairy rings, were known to the dwellers in many a wattled hut where Padraig had slept.  Old people who spoke no language but their own luminous Irish winged his young imagination with tales far more marvelous than those of Nennius, the monk of Bangor.

Still, Padraig had never himself seen any of these extraordinary beings.  He also suspected that Brother Basil would not vouch for the truth of everything in the Latin books he taught his pupils how to read.

Days passed, and Brother Basil had not returned.  The uneasiness among the monks was growing.  It was said that the Abbot himself was as much in the dark as they were.  Padraig had just made up his mind that he could endure it no longer, when the Abbot sent for him.