“The white horse[A] galloped on and on,” said Jock, with the instinct of a story-teller; “and the wolves came after, pad, pad, all like one, though there were hundreds and hundreds of them, and the woman in the sleigh (did I tell you it was a sleigh? but I don’t know rightly myself what a sleigh is) got wild with fright, and the three little things cried, and the trees made a noise against the sky; and the wood got deeper and deeper, and the night darker and darker; and then she heard them all panting behind her, and their breath hot upon her, and every moment she thought they would jump up behind and crunch her with their teeth—”
[A] The poem of Ivan Ivanovitch had not been written in those days, and perhaps it might have been above Jock’s understanding.
“Go on, child, go on,” said old Trevor. “I think I’ve heard the story; but I don’t remember how she got out of it.”
“This is what Lucy will never listen to,” said Jock, solemnly; “she says it can’t be true; she says there never was a woman like that. She says she’ll beat me if I go on; but it is the real end to the story all the same. Well, you know, the woman was wild; she didn’t know what she was doing. Just when they were going to crunch her with their teeth in her neck, she turned round, and she took up one of the children and flung it out into the middle of the wolves; and the little thing gave just one more cry (he was crying, you know, before), and the wolves caught him in their big teeth, and tore him, one a piece here, and another a piece there, hundreds and hundreds of them; and the old white horse galloped on and on.
“Well, but then that was only one,” said Jock, resuming after a pause; “when they had eaten that little thing all up, they were not half satisfied, and they said to each other, ‘Come on,’ and two minutes after, what should the woman hear but the whole mob of them after her again, and the sound of them panting and their breaths on her neck. And she took hold of another little child—”
“You needn’t tell me any more,” said the old man; “where did you get these dreadful stories; they turn one sick.”
“She threw them all out, the first, and the second, and the third,” cried the boy, making haste to complete his narrative, “and then she was saved herself. Lucy never gets further than the first; but you’ve heard the second. And she says it can’t be true; but it is true,” said Jock, severely; “many people have told it. I’ve read another story—”
“Hold your tongue, child,” said the old man.
Which Jock did at once. He was ready to come forward, to recount his experience, or instruct others by his large amount of miscellaneous reading whenever it was necessary, but he did not thrust his information upon unwilling ears. He turned round again promptly, and, laying his book down on the white rug, supported himself on his elbows and resumed his reading. Jock had a perfectly good conscience, and could hear any number of parables (though he was always suspicious of them) without turning a hair.
But old Trevor was not equally innocent; he trembled a little within himself at that story of remorseless self-preservation. The wolves were the image he had himself used, and when he remembered that he had looked forward to their struggle with amusement, and indeed done his utmost to draw them together, without much regard for the lamb who was to escape as she could from their clutches, a momentary tremor of conscience came over him. But it did not last long; impressions of this kind seldom do; and when he received a second visit in the evening, this time from Philip Rainy, who expressed much solicitude about his health, old Trevor had ceased to feel any compunctions about the fierce competition to which he was going to expose his child. But he was firmly determined that the first and most natural competitor, the man who was of the family, and had a sort of claim to everything that belonged to the name, should not be, so to speak, in the running at all.