"What colour were they?" Boris asked.
Nancy said they were of a yellowish gray.
"They were young wolves, then," said Boris; "and if you see them again, catch one for me if you can—I long to possess a tame wolf-cub; but have your knife handy in case of the mother interfering."
It so fell out that a few days after this conversation Nancy did see these same little creatures again, four of them together; whereupon, mindful of her husband's great wish to possess one, she left the baby asleep in its hand-cart and gave chase. The wolflings scampered bravely, and led her up and down and about in every direction, until Nancy bethought herself that she was getting winded, and besides that she might easily get confused, if she went further, as to the position in which she had left her precious little Katie. So she gave up the hunt, and returned towards the place whence she started.
Then she realized how just had been her fears, for it was with difficulty that she succeeded at last in retracing her steps to the place where the hand-cart had been left. To her surprise and alarm she saw that the cart lay over upon its side; and hastening towards it she perceived, to her unspeakable consternation and horror, that it was empty.
Poor Nancy was not the person to sit down and do nothing in an emergency; but the horror of the discovery she had just made bereft her for some few moments of the power of action as well as of thought. Her mind instantly flew back to the words of Boris telling her to beware of the mother-wolf, and for several minutes these words danced in her brain. The mother-wolf, it was the mother-wolf! it had taken her darling child in order to feed those detestable little gray scuttling things which she had chased through the trees! While she had been senselessly hunting the cubs, the mother-wolf—some lean-looking, gray, skulking brute—had crept secretly up and carried away her Katie, her darling baby.
In another moment Nancy had drawn her sharp little dagger, and with shriek upon shriek had rushed wildly into the forest and disappeared among the pines, whither she knew not, but full of a wild determination to find that gray thief and force her to deliver up to her the priceless thing she had stolen.
When Boris returned home late in the afternoon he was somewhat surprised to find that Nancy was not at home. She and the baby had gone for a stroll in the woods, the old servant explained, and had not been home to dinner.
"God grant the lieshui [wood-spirits] have not got hold of them, or done them some injury!" the old fellow concluded, sighing deeply. "The forest is a terrible place, and for my part I have always warned the barina."
Boris did not stay to exchange words with his faithful old serf, but taking a horse from the stable galloped off as fast as he could into the forest, shouting Nancy's name in every direction. Up and down, and through and through every glade and pathway, wherever there was room for the horse to pass, Boris rode; and ever as he rode he shouted Nancy's name, until his voice grew hoarse, and the cob waxed weary, and the light began to wane, and still he neither found trace nor heard sound of his lost wife and child.