Closely allied to the vampire is the were-wolf, which, however, instead of devouring the intellect of human beings, feeds only on their flesh. Like the vampire, the were-wolf belongs to the order of elementals; but, unlike the vampire, it is confined to a very limited sphere--the wilds of Norway, Sweden, and Russia, and only appears in two guises, that of a human being in the daytime and a wolf at night. I have closely questioned many people who have travelled in those regions, but very few of them--one or two at the most--have actually come in contact with those to whom the existence of the were-wolf is not a fable but a fact. One of these travellers, a mere acquaintance whom I met in an hotel in the Latin Quarter of Paris, assured me that the authenticity of a story he would tell me, relating to the were-wolf, was, in the neighbourhood through which he travelled, never for a single moment doubted. My informant, a highly cultured Russian, spoke English, French, German, and Italian with as great fluency as I spoke my native tongue, and I believed him to be perfectly genuine. The incident he told me, to which unanimous belief was accredited, happened to two young men (whom I will call Hans and Carl), who were travelling to Nijni Novgorod, a city in the province of Tobolsk. The route they took was off the beaten track, and led them through a singularly wild and desolate tract of country. One evening, when they were trotting mechanically along, their horses suddenly came to a standstill and appeared to be very much frightened. They inquired of the driver the reason of such strange behaviour, and he pointed with his whip to a spot on the ice--they were then crossing a frozen lake--a few feet ahead of them. They got out of the sleigh, and, approaching the spot indicated, found the body of a peasant lying on his back, his throat gnawed away and all his entrails gone. "A wolf without a doubt," they said, and getting back into the sleigh, they drove on, taking good care to see that their rifles were ready for instant action. They had barely gone a mile when the horses again halted, and a second corpse was discovered, the corpse of a child with its face and thighs entirely eaten away. Again they drove on, and had progressed a few more miles when the horses stopped so abruptly that the driver was pitched bodily out; and before Carl and Hans could dismount, the brutes started off at a wild gallop. They were eventually got under control, but it was with the greatest difficulty that they were forced to turn round and go back, in order to pick up the unfortunate driver. The farther they went, the more restless they became, and when, at length, they approached the place where the driver had been thrown, they came to a sudden and resolute standstill. As no amount of whipping would now make them go on, Hans got out, and advancing a few steps, espied something lying across the track some little distance ahead of them. Gun in hand, he advanced