“Have mercy on me! Have mercy, Ulenspiegel!”
“This wolf can talk!” they exclaimed, crossing themselves again. “He is a devil in very truth, and knows Ulenspiegel’s name already!”
“Have mercy! Have mercy!” the voice cried again. “I am no wolf. Order the bell to stop ringing. For thus it is that it tolls for the dead. And my wrists are torn by the trap. I am old and I am bleeding. Have mercy! And what is this—this shrill voice of a child awakening all the village? Oh pray, have mercy!”
“I have heard your voice before,” said Ulenspiegel passionately. “You are the fishmonger. The murderer of Claes, the vampire that preys upon poor maids! Have no fear, good mother and father. This is none other than the Dean of the Fishmongers on whose account poor Soetkin died of grief.” And with one hand he held the man fast by the neck, and with the other he drew out his cutlass.
But Toria the mother of Betkin prevented him.
“Take him alive,” cried she. “Take him alive. Let him pay!”
Meanwhile there were many fisherfolk, men and women of Heyst, who were come out at the news that the werwolf was taken and that he was no devil but a man. Some of these carried lanterns and flaming torches, and all of them cried aloud when they saw him:
“Thief! Murderer! Where hide you the gold that you have stolen from your poor victims?”
“He shall repay it all,” said Toria. And she would have beaten him in her rage had she not fallen down there and then upon the sand in a mad fury like unto one dead. And they left her there until she came to herself.
And Ulenspiegel, sad at heart, beheld the clouds racing like mad things in the sky, and out at sea the white crests of the waves, and on the ground at his feet the white face of the fishmonger that looked up at him in the light of the lantern with cruel eyes. And the ashes beat upon his heart.