"Every wolf for forty miles round about is up at the battle-field," I said. "It is fairly marvellous how such intelligence spreads among these brutes. They must have a language of their own. How little we really understand of the animal creation about us, with all our pride of wisdom! Even the shark, sailors aver, knows which ship to pursue." He shuddered and closed his eyes as I spoke. I thought at first that he had been seized with a spasm of physical anguish, by the drawn expression of his face; then it dawned upon me that his suffering was mental. "Yes, I dare say they are all there," he said, lifting his voice somewhat. "I can hear them--see them! Do you know," he went on, excitedly, "all day long, all night long, I seem to have corpses all about me. They are there just the same when I close my eyes--when I sleep. Some of them are my friends; others I do not know, but they all know me. They look at me out of dull eyes; they seem to say they are waiting for me--and then there are the wolves!" He began shivering at this again, and his voice sank into a piteous quaver. "These are but fancies," I said, gently, as one would speak to a child awakened in terror by a nightmare. "You will be rid of them once you get where you can have rest and care." It seemed passing strange that I should be talking thus to a man of as powerful frame as myself, and even older in years. Yet he was so wan and weak, and the few days of suffering had so altered, I may say refined, his face and mien, that it was natural enough too, when one thinks of it. He became calmer after this, and looked at me for a long time as I paddled through a stretch of still water, in silence. "You must have been well born, after all," he said, finally. I did not wholly understand his meaning, but answered: "Why, yes, the Van Hoorns are a very good family--noble in some branches, in fact--and my father had his sheepskin from Utrecht. But what of it?" "What I would say is, you have acted in all this like a gentleman." I could not help smiling to myself, now that I saw what was in his mind. "For that matter," I answered, lightly, "it does not seem to me that either the Van Hoorns or the dead Mauverensens have much to do with it." I remembered my mother's parting remark to me, and added: "The only Van Hoorn I know of in the Valley will not be at all pleased to learn I have brought you back." "Nobody will be pleased," he said, gloomily. After that it was fit that silence should again intervene, for I could not gainsay him. He closed his eyes as if asleep, and I paddled on in the alternate moonlight and shadow.