having recovered the scent, came leaping in over the wall, followed by the Baron, streaming with sweat as he rode his horse, which was covered with foam and blood.
The dogs made straight for the bramble bush, and began worrying something hidden there.
“Halloo! halloo!! halloo!!!” cried the Lord of Vez, in a voice of thunder, as he leapt from his horse, not caring if there was anyone or not to look after it, and drawing out his hunting-knife, he dashed towards the vault, forcing his way through the hounds. He found them fighting over a fresh and bleeding wolf-skin, but the body had disappeared.
There was no mistake as to its being the skin of the were-wolf that they had been hunting, for with the exception of one white hair, it was entirely black.
What had become of the body? No one ever knew. Only as from this time forth Thibault was never seen again, it was generally believed that the former sabot-maker and no other was the were-wolf.
Furthermore, as the skin had been found without the body, and, as, from the spot where it was found a peasant reported to have heard someone speak the words: “O God! take my life! I give it gladly, if only by my death I may give back life to her whom I have killed,” the priest declared openly that Thibault, by reason of his sacrifice and repentance, had been saved!
And what added to the consistency of belief in this tradition was, that every year on the anniversary of Agnelette’s death, up to the time when the Monasteries were all abolished at the Revolution, a monk from the Abbey of the Premonstratensians at Bourg-Fontaine, which stands half a league from Préciamont, was seen to come and pray beside her grave.
. . . . . .
Such is the history of the black wolf, as it was told me by old Mocquet, my father’s keeper.
Wagner the Wehr-wolf
(George W. M. Reynolds)
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