“At last, one morning in the month of December, when the snow lay heavy on the ground, some men came upon a track which they all agreed must be that of the wolf. They went and got their weapons, and set out in chase. They followed, and followed, and better than followed, and the trail led them high into the hills, wondering much at the huge bounds with which the beast had galloped up the steepest places. They concluded that Alister had been after him, and that the beast knew it, and had made for the most inaccessible spot he was acquainted with. They came at length to a point where a bare-foot human track joined that of the wolf for a little way, and after that they came upon it again and again. Up and up the mountain they went--sometimes losing the track from the great springs the wolf took--now across a great chasm which they had to go round the head of, now up the face of a rock too steep for the snow to lie upon, so that there was no print of his horrid feet. “But at last, almost at the top of the mountain, they saw before them two dark spots in a little hollow, and when they reached it, there was the wolf, dead in a mass of frozen blood and trampled snow. It was a huge, gaunt, gray, meagre carcass, with the foam frozen about its jaws, and stabbed in many places, which showed the fight had been a close one. All the snow was beaten about, as if with many feet, which showed still more plainly what a tussle it had been. A little farther on lay Alister, as if asleep, stretched at full length, with his face to the sky. He had been dead for many hours, they thought, but the smile had not faded which his spirit left behind as it went. All about his body were the marks of the brute’s teeth--everywhere almost except on his face. That had been bespattered with blood, but it had been wiped away. His dirk was lying not far off, and his skene dhu close by his hand. “There is but one thing more--and I think that is just the thing that made me want to tell you the story. The men who found Alister declared when they came home, and ever after when they told the story--Grizzie says her grandmother used always to say so--that, when they lifted him to bring him away, they saw in the snow the mark of the body, deep-pressed, but only as far as the shoulders; there was no mark of his head whatever. And when they told this to the wise woman, she answered only, ‘Of coorse! of coorse!--Gien I had been wi’ ye, lads, I wad hae seen mair.’ When they pressed her to speak more plainly, she only shook her head, and muttered, ‘Dull-hertit gowks!’--That’s all, my lady.”