"I hope it won't attack us, father," Peter said, catching hold of Savanich by the hand. "What should you do if it did?"
But before Savanich could reply, Caspan gave a loud bark and dashed into the thicket, and the next moment a terrible pandemonium of yells, and snorts, and sharp howls filled the air. Drawing his knife from its sheath, and telling Peter to keep close at his heels, Savanich followed Caspan and speedily came upon the scene of the encounter. Caspan had hold of a huge grey wolf by the neck, and was hanging on to it like grim death, in spite of the brute's frantic efforts to free itself.
There was but little doubt that the brave dog would have, eventually, paid the penalty for its rashness--for the wolf had mauled it badly, and it was beginning to show signs of exhaustion through loss of blood--had not Savanich arrived in the nick of time. A couple of thrusts from his knife stretched the wolf on the ground, when, to his utmost horror, it suddenly metamorphosed into a hideous old hag.
"A werwolf!" Savanich gasped, crossing himself. "Get out of her way, Peter, quick!"
But it was too late. Thrusting out a skinny hand, the hag scratched Peter on the ankle with the long curved, poisonous nail of her forefinger. Then, with an evil smile on her lips, she turned over on her back, and expired. And before Peter could be got home he, too, was dead.
The ideal home of all things weird and uncanny--is cold, grey, gaunt, and giant Russia. Nowhere is the werwolf so much in evidence to-day as in the land of the Czar, where all the primitive conditions favourable to such anomalies, still exist, and where they have undergone but little change in the last ten thousand years.
A thinly-populated country--vast stretches of wild uncultivated land, full of dense forests, rich in trees most favourable to Elementals, and watered by deep, silent tarns, and stealthily moving streams,--its very atmosphere is impregnated with lycanthropy.
At the base of giant firs and poplars, or poking out their heads impudently, from amidst brambles and ferns, are werwolf flowers--flowers with all the characteristics of those found in Hungary and the Balkan Peninsula, but of a greater variety. There are, for example, in addition to the white, yellow, and red species, those of a bluish-white hue, that emit a glow at night like the phosphorescent glow emanating from decaying animal and vegetable matter; and those of a brilliant orange, covered with black, protruding spots, suggestive of some particularly offensive disease, that show a marked preference for damp places, and are specially to be met with growing in the slime and mud at the edge of a pool, or in the soft, rotten mould of morasses.