"Why, it was the time the sheep were being missed," said the woman, punctuating her words with the clatter of dishes on the drainboard. "Then there was a child gone, and another, and then tales of this great wolf about the country. I didn't see him; us little ones stayed under roof by darkness after that." "That wasn't all of it," said Pat. "You told me more than that." "Well," continued Magda, "there was my uncle, who was best hand with a rifle in the village. He and others went after the creature, and my uncle, he came back telling how he'd seen it plain against the sky, and how he'd fired at it. He couldn't miss, he was that close, but the wolf gave him a look and ran away." "And then what?" "Then the Priest came, and he said it wasn't a natural wolf. He melted up a silver coin and cast a bullet, and he gave it to my uncle, he being the best shot in the village. And the next night he went out once more." "Did he get it?" asked Pat. "I don't remember." "He did. He came upon it by the pasture, and he aimed his gun. The creature looked straight at him with its evil red eyes, and he shot it. When he came to it, there wasn't a wolf at all, but this man--his name I forget--with a hole in his head. And then the Priest, he said he was a werewolf, and only a silver bullet could kill him. But my uncle, _he_ said those evil red eyes kept staring at him for many nights." "Evil red eyes!" said Pat suddenly. "Magda," she asked in a faint voice, "could he change any time he wanted to?" "Only by night, the Priest said. By sunrise he had to be back." "Only by night!" mused the girl. Another idea was forming in her active little mind, another conception, disturbing, impossible to phrase. "Is that worse than being possessed by a devil, Magda?" "Sure it's worse! The Priest, he could cast out the devil, but I never heard no cure for being a werewolf." Pat said nothing further, but slid from her high perch to the floor and went soberly out of the kitchen. The fears of last night had come to life again, and now the over-cast skies outside seemed a fitting symbol to her mood. She stared thoughtfully out of the living room windows, and the sudden splash of raindrops against the pane lent a final touch to the whole desolate ensemble. "I'm just a superstitious little idiot!" she told herself. "I laugh at Mother because she always likes to play North and South, and here I'm letting myself worry over superstitions that were discarded before there was any such thing as a game called contract bridge." But her arguments failed to carry conviction. The memory of the terrible eyes of that _other_ had clicked too aptly to Magda's phrase. She couldn't subdue the picture that haunted her, and she couldn't cast off the apprehensiveness of her mood. She recalled gloomily that Dr. Horker was at the Club--wouldn't be home before evening, else she'd have gladly availed herself of his solid, matter-of-fact company.