Yet a week after that evening the wolfman appeared at the manor-house and announced, to the delight of the lord, that he had come to be his hunter once again, as of old.
The count laughed, and shook his hand, and spoke kindly to him.
"You are welcome, Volkitch; and for your service to me of last year both your mother and yourself are free peasants, and shall till your own soil." After a while he added, "But what of the wolves, Volkitch? Will you hunt them also now? For there have been many of late, so that they become a terror in the place. Only last week the peasants say that—"
The wolfman laughed strangely, and his eyes glistened.
"A week ago is a week ago," he said; "but to-day is to-day. The wolves that lived are dead. Volkitch slew them. I am their enemy. Find me a wolf and I will kill it."
IN HONOUR BOUND.
"Hullo! What's up?" cried Elbridge Harland as he woke out of a deep sleep with a sense of being choked, while he struggled to free himself from the grasp of strong hands suddenly laid upon him. No answer came but deep guttural grunts; his struggles were futile, his head was pressed hard into his blankets, and his hands were tightly held behind him and tied there. The thongs seemed to cut into his wrists, and then his captors rose and relieved him of their weight. With difficulty he turned his face round, only to see the copper-hued forms of Indians all about him, and their bead-like black eyes watching him.
"What is it?" he gasped, recovering his breath. "Tom, where are you? Are you alive?" He was calling to his companion, Tom Winthrop, another young Harvard man with whom he had been spending the last three weeks in camp on the outskirts of Estes Park in the Rocky Mountains.
"I'm here," came the reply in a half-smothered voice. "I'm tied up fast. How are you? What's happened?"