Tropile faltered. He hadn't even seen the damned woman, but there she was, rising up from behind the counter, screaming her head off: "Wolf! Wolf!"
He said sharply: "Citizeness, I beg you—" But that was no good. The evidence was on him and her screams would fetch others.
Tropile panicked. He started toward her to silence her, but that was no good, either. He whirled. She was screaming, screaming, and there were people to hear. Tropile darted into the street, but they were popping out of every doorway now, appearing from each rat's hole in which they had hid to escape Boyne.
"Please!" he cried, sobbing. "Wait a minute!"
But they weren't waiting. They had heard the woman and maybe some of them had seen him with the bread. They were all around him—no, they were all over him; they were clutching at him, tearing at his soft, warm furs.
They pulled at his pockets and the stolen twists of salt spilled accusingly out. They yanked at his sleeves and even the stout, unweakened seams ripped open. He was fairly captured.
"Wolf!" they were shouting. "Wolf!" It drowned out the distant noise from where Boyne had finally been run to earth, a block and more away. It drowned out everything.
It was the other circumstance when they forgot to be gracious: when they had trapped a Son of the Wolf.
III