“Father,” he faltered, “they sent me to find you.” “It is well that you have come,” the monk answered with his untroubled smile, “you and no one else. I stumbled upon this place,--really stumbled, for a stone rolled under my foot,--and here I had to stay until this troublesome lame knee would permit me to walk.” “That is not the whole of it,” growled the leader of the wolf-people. “Our dogs winded him, and had he been like any other monk who ever told beads he would have been pulled down. But he spoke to them in our own tongue, and my mother, hearing his voice, would have him come to her, for she had seen no priest for many years. When he heard our story he said that he would be our friend. And so he would, I believe, had we been what the foolish have thought us.” “Then,” stammered Padraig, “it is not true that--that--” “That the loup-garou is abroad in the land?” finished Brother Basil with delicate scorn. “No. Wolves are wolves, and men are men,--and some men are thieves.” “He means,” snapped the wolf-man, “that one of your own stewards opened the gates to us, using our tracks to hide his own.” Padraig grinned knowingly. “Simon,” he said. “Simon.” “Even so,” said Brother Basil. “He was very zealous about those wolves,” said Padraig, reflectively, “especially about using spiritual weapons and not slings and spears against them. But how--” “It was the thieving of young lambs of the choicest breed that set the shepherds to thinking there must be more than wolves abroad,” the wolf-leader went on. “But for your Simon, with his long tongue, they might have driven us away, for Abbot Cuthbert is no coward, nor has he patience with cowards. But Simon came upon us one night, when we had broken into the sheep-fold and were making off, and he was not too frightened to choose for himself out of what was left. Then when we came again he gave us the meat we came for, taking certain fine fleeces and lambskins for himself. We stole as the wild creatures do, for food; we have no use for parchments or carded wool. We killed as they kill, to fend off our enemies. The Danish sea-wolves and the armored wild beasts of Strongbow and de Lacy hunted us as if we were wolves indeed. What could we do but hunt as the wolves hunt, snatch our meat where we could, hide like foxes in the holes of the mountain, make ourselves dreaded that we might live, and not die? The Normans brought to Dermot MacMurragh two hundred heads of the men of Ossory for his delight. All my mother's children were killed by them save only myself. Well for you that you are no Norman, young clerk with the red head, or not the word of a hundred priests had saved you.”