"You shall pay for that!" mutters old Caspiar. Gently opening the window, he fires.
"Not since 1860 have I seen a wolf," says Caspiar, looking down at the dead beast. "Then they used to run in out of the forest when I was an apprentice in my uncle's Inn. We were always frightened of them. And now, even after the Germans, we are frightened of them still."
"I am more frightened of wolves than I am of Germans," confesses Madame Caspiar in a whisper.
We stand there in the breaking dawn, looking at the dead wolf, and wondering fearfully if there are not more of its kind, creeping in from the snow-filled plains beyond.
Other figures join us.
Two Red-Cross French doctors, a wounded English Colonel, la grandmère, Mme. Caspiar's mother, and a Belgian priest, all come issuing gradually from the low portals of the Inn into the yard.
Then in the chill dawn, with the glare of the snow-fields in our eyes, we discuss the matter in low voices.
It is touching to find that each one is thinking of his own country's soldiers, and the menace that packs of hungry wolves may mean to them, English, Belgian, French; especially to wounded men.
"It's the sound of the guns that brings them out," says a French doctor learnedly. "This wolf has probably travelled hundreds of miles. And of course there are more. Oui, oui! C'est ça Certainly there will be more."