“‘My friend, do you think that Ugo Klun still lives, then?’
“‘How should I think it?’ replied I, for now I saw my folly; ‘it is at the most an old woman’s tale. Was he not shot in the woods above the Verbas? You have read the corporal’s report with your own eyes. Accidente, Father, is not that enough?’
“He was walking about the room now, muttering to himself and snapping his fingers. I do not think he heard my answer, for presently he came and stood opposite to me, and with a great beat of his fist on the table he cried:
“‘If the man lives, God helping me, I will find him.’
“He would have said more, but even as he was repeating his words there was a loud knocking on the door of the room, and when we opened quickly we found Hans, the steward, breathless with news which sent us running to the park and crying for help as we ran.”
CHAPTER XIV
THE WHIRLING FIRE
“A word from Hans had carried us from the house, but the great measure of his news we had while we drew our cloaks about us, and armed ourselves with the guns which stood always in the hall of the château.
“‘God of Heaven! that I did not tell her!’ gasped the trembling steward. ‘She set off an hour ago to wait for my master in the park. I never thought that she would pass the gates—how should I?—but now comes the news that she is on the Jajce road! May the day be black that sends me with such tidings to my master!’
“You, excellency, who are a stranger to the mountain land about Jajce, may well know nothing of the meaning of such words as these; yet to us, fed from our childhood on knowledge of the woods, the message of Hans was like tidings of death itself. Even the peasants in their numbers scarce dare venture out upon the hills when the sun has set and the howling of the wolves makes dismal music of the night. I, who know the passes as I know these waters, would as soon cast myself down from yonder campanile as put horses to my sleigh when the light of the sunshine is no longer upon the snow. For if I did so, then might I look to leave my bones upon the road—to be torn limb from limb by hungry beasts before the lamps of the village were lost to my view. Christine was aware of no such dangers. She had heard tales in the summer time of travellers who had been devoured in the desolate places of the mountains by ravenous packs; of bridal parties whose wedding journey had been a journey to the terrible death which the hills hold in store for the reckless. But that peril should await her within a stone’s throw of the Count’s park was a thing she had not dreamt of. Eager to greet again the man who was more dear to her than anything in the world, thinking to please him by meeting his sleigh when it was yet some distance from the house, she had ventured beyond the gates, and had disappeared at last down the road to Jajce. A peasant had remonstrated with her almost at the lodge of the park; but, his tongue being unknown to her, she had laughed at his gesticulations, and had gone on—God knew to what peril or to what fate.
“You may be sure that tidings of all this were spread abroad very quickly by the men of the Count’s household. So fast did the news run that we found quite a little company at the gates of the park, the grooms being come from their stables, the woodlanders from their huts. Of these some had torches in their hands, for it was now full dark; some carried sticks, some lanterns. It was agreed quickly, even above the babble of the talk, that we should strike all together down the road to Jajce; and we trusted that the flare of our torches and the sound of our voices would help to keep danger from the path. In this we were not disappointed, though we had not gone more than half a mile from the house when the need for our journey was made manifest to us. We could see by the moon’s light, which shone gloriously upon the whitened hills, the creeping forms of packs upon the heights. From wood to wood they skulked—scores, nay hundreds, of the famished beasts; and their howling was like a very dirge of the dead. Mournfully, weirdly, now with a ferocity which chilled the heart, now long-drawn as the sighs of damned spirits, the haunting wail went up. That was a heavy winter—a winter when the frost made the hills like domes of iron; when the snow lay heavy and deep upon the grass; when the cattle died in the fields and the bears came down even to the gardens of the houses. It was a season when the wolf was to be found at the very gates of the city: when the flesh was torn from the woodlanders’ bones as they sat in their huts; a season spoken of now in hushed whispers, remembered by a people born and bred to such perils.