When the young lord realized, a few days after this, that the wolfman had finally fled, he inaugurated a great hue and cry after him, for he was concerned about his hunter, whom he really liked and valued. The peasants of the villages upon the estate were all pressed to take part in the search, which lasted for many days; but, though rewards were offered for his discovery, and though threats of punishment in case of his non-capture were freely scattered, the moujiks entirely failed to find any traces of him.
There had been a fresh fall of snow, which had obliterated, they explained, all tracks. It was impossible to find him; so the chase was, eventually, abandoned. The young lord rightly conjectured that the peasants knew more about the matter than they chose to reveal, and punished certain selected individuals whom he suspected to be more guilty than the rest; but his severity did not result in the discovery of the missing hunter.
Meanwhile, the wolfman was not very far away. After his disappearance he was, at first, invisible, but after a while he began to make occasional visits to his old home, though only for an hour or two at a time, to see his mother, and to obtain ammunition and tea. He inhabited an abandoned woodman's hut in the forest, and was rarely seen by man. It was a curious and significant circumstance that after his departure the number of wolves that prowled about the neighbourhood increased quickly; neither did the village any longer enjoy that immunity from their depredations which it had known in former days.
Then something happened which changed the whole tenor of the wolfman's thoughts and opinions in the matter of his foster-relations.
His mother, to whom he was entirely devoted, now an elderly woman, was wandering through the forest one evening filling her basket with broken firewood, when she was suddenly attacked by three wolves. Having a small hatchet in her hand she bravely kept the brutes off, killing one and wounding another, but being herself badly bitten by the third before she reached home, more dead than alive with the shock of her adventure and the terror of it.
When the wolfman heard this, and saw his mother suffering, the scales fell from his eyes. The sacred animal, from occupying the premier position in his strange affections, next to that of his own mother, had suddenly fallen to the lowest. From that day and until he had cleared the surrounding forests of the enemy, there was terrible warfare between Volkitch and the wolves. They had become abominable in his eyes, and he in theirs; he chased them when there were but two or three of them, and when they were assembled in a pack they chased him.
Once he was seen by a terrified peasant to cross the road, pursued by a score of howling brutes. The wolfman led by half a dozen paces or so, and stabbed at his foes, when one presumed to come within reach, with the dagger he held in one hand, or struck at it with the pistol he carried in the other. "The wolfman uttered fierce yells as he ran," said the peasant, "and laughed in a terrible manner. For certain," he ended, "he was caught and killed."
"The wolfman uttered fierce yells as he ran."
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