“No,—­not with Simon watching the gate,” agreed Padraig, cheerfully.  “I wonder does he know how many lies he has told in this matter?”

“He will have enough to do in accounting to the Abbot for those that are known,” said Brother Basil with a certain edge to his voice that Padraig knew well.  “I think, however, that he really believes he has had dealings with the werewolf.  There are men who would run, shaking with terror, to pledge their souls to the foul fiend if they saw their profit in it.  If he knew the truth he could sell his knowledge easily, and I am not disposed to undeceive him now.  Since Ruric gave me his promise to end this evil I have thought much of the matter, and I believe that the Abbot will approve my plan.  Let him send men with a hurdle to the foot of the cliff to-morrow.  No one need be told more than that I am lame through an accident.”

“Some of them will look foolish when they hear that,” Padraig observed with satisfaction.  “I grieve for your lameness, Father, and yet I could leap and sing all the way home for joy that it is not as we feared.”

“There would be naught to laugh at if any other man had found us out, I warrant you,” Ruric said gruffly.  “The Father won my promise from me by his gentle and comforting words to my old mother in her distress, for she feared to die, knowing how we had lived.  I had not thought there could be such fearless faith and kindness in any man.  Say to your Abbot moreover that if he, or you, or any of your folk play us false they will find that a werewolf can hunt down anything that runs.”

“If I deceived ye,” Padraig answered gravely, “I would throw myself straightway into the river to cheat your vengeance.”  As he tightened the straps of his sandals he looked once more at the strange and savage assembly.  There were some thirty men and women and several half-grown youngsters, garbed in wolfskins so shaped as to leave them free to run or climb.  Shoes were skilfully fashioned like a great wolf-paw; skins were joined so cunningly that when the wearer loped along a hillside in the chill pale gold of the winter sunset, or skulked among the shadows of summer woods, any one would swear that what he saw was a lurking wolf.  The wolf-mask with its long muzzle and furry ears concealed the face, the unshorn beards and hair mingled with the shaggy shoulder-fur of the tunics.  A shepherd looking for missing lambs would find only wolf-tracks to guide him.  Traps had been sprung or smashed, storehouses rifled, watchdogs killed.  Even the hard-headed and harder-hearted Norman huntsmen turned back one day, when they discovered their hounds baying at the foot of a tree.

Padraig knew all about the slaughter done by Dermot MacMurragh and his Norman allies, up and down Ossory.  Fierce in their despair, vengeful in their cunning, these refugees had run wild like their dogs.  The huge untamed brutes were stronger than collies and wiser than wolves, and nothing could have kept them from raiding any sheepfold that they scented.