so long that Ulrich thought, perhaps, he had fainted with the pain of his injuries. Then he spoke slowly and in jerks.
“How the whole region would stare and gabble if we rode into the market-square together. No one living can remember seeing a Znaeym and a von Gradwitz talking to one another in friendship. And what peace there would be among the forester folk if we ended our feud tonight. And if we choose to make peace among our people there is none other to interfere, no interlopers from outside … You would come and keep the Sylvester night beneath my roof, and I would come and feast on some high day at your castle … I would never fire a shot on your land, save when you invited me as a guest; and you should come and shoot with me down in the marshes where the wildfowl are. In all the countryside there are none that could hinder if we willed to make peace. I never thought to have wanted to do other than hate you all my life, but I think I have changed my mind about things too, this last half-hour. And you offered me your wine-flask … Ulrich von Gradwitz, I will be your friend.”
For a space both men were silent, turning over in their minds the wonderful changes that this dramatic reconciliation would bring about. In the cold, gloomy forest, with the wind tearing in fitful gusts through the naked branches and whistling round the tree-trunks, they lay and waited for the help that would now bring release and succour to both parties. And each prayed a private prayer that his men might be the first to arrive, so that he might be the first to show honourable attention to the enemy that had become a friend.
Presently, as the wind dropped for a moment, Ulrich broke silence.
“Let’s shout for help,” he said, “in this lull our voices may carry a little way.”
“They won’t carry far through the trees and undergrowth,” said Georg, “but we can try. Together, then.”
The two raised their voices in a prolonged hunting call.
“Together again,” said Ulrich a few minutes later, after listening in vain for an answering halloo.
“I heard nothing but the pestilential wind,” said Georg hoarsely.
There was silence again for some minutes, and then Ulrich gave a joyful cry.
“I can see figures coming through the wood. They are following in the way I came down the hillside.”
Both men raised their voices in as loud a shout as they could muster.
“They hear us! They’ve stopped. Now they see us. They’re running down the hill towards us,” cried Ulrich.
“How many of them are there?” asked Georg.
“I can’t see distinctly,” said Ulrich; “nine or ten.”
“Then they are yours,” said Georg; “I had only seven out with me.”
“They are making all the speed they can, brave lads,” said Ulrich gladly.
“Are they your men?” asked Georg. “Are they your men?” he repeated impatiently as Ulrich did not answer.
“No,” said Ulrich with a laugh, the idiotic chattering laugh of a man unstrung with hideous fear.
“Who are they?” asked Georg quickly, straining his eyes to see what the other would gladly not have seen.
“Wolves.”
The Optimist
In the gathering twilight Richard Duncombe rode a tired horse through a seemingly endless succession of fields in what he guessed to be a more or less homeward direction. After the crowd and movement and liveliness of a good day with the hounds there was something still and ghostly about this long, slow ride through a misty world of plough-land, grassland, and fallow, in which he and his horse seemed to be the only living things. Even when he struck into a road it seemed a deserted highway bordered by long stretches of hedge and coppice, with never a farm-gate or signpost to break its reticence or relieve its sameness. It was with a sense of pleasure that he came suddenly into the glow of lighted windows and drew rein hopefully outside the garden gate of a substantial-sized dwelling. A tall, red-haired girl stood in the doorway of the house, as though keeping watch along what could be seen of the dusky roadway. She returned Duncombe’s greeting with a pleasant “Good evening.”
“I see you have a stable there,” he called out; “do you think you could let me put my horse up there for an hour’s rest and give him a little flour and water? He’s fairly done up, and I don’t think there’s an inn within five miles.”
“Mother will be delighted,” said the girl, and in a few minutes she had helped Duncombe to stable and water his tired animal.
“We are just sitting down to tea,” she said shyly, “and mother hopes you will kindly come in and take a cup.”
It was not the first time that Duncombe had partaken of pleasant wayside hospitality during homeward rides, and he gladly accepted the invitation. The house was evidently one belonging to fairly comfortable yeoman owners, and its mistress was a kindly faced woman, with quiet, friendly manners, who sat in her parlour at a table well laid out with the furnishing of a substantial middle-class tea. Seated also at the table when Duncombe entered was a red-haired boy of about seventeen, evidently the brother of the girl who had played the part of stable-help.
Duncombe lost no time in transforming himself from a stranger into an agreeable tea-table guest. He was hungry, and paid due attention to the fact, but he found time to talk, to praise, to take interest in the pictures and old china set round the room, and to wait on his hostess when the kettle needed moving from the hob to the table. He was possessed of a lively, sympathetic nature, that easily attuned itself to the company that he happened to be in, and he would have made himself equally at home at a chapel tea-fight or a Montmartre café-chantant. But on this occasion he became suddenly conscious of the disconcerting fact that he was striking a
