"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_."




QUAIL SEED


"The outlook is not encouraging for us smaller businesses," said Mr.
Scarrick to the artist and his sister, who had taken rooms over his
suburban grocery store. "These big concerns are offering all sorts of
attractions to the shopping public which we couldn't afford to imitate,
even on a small scale--reading-rooms and play-rooms and gramophones and
Heaven knows what. People don't care to buy half a pound of sugar
nowadays unless they can listen to Harry Lauder and have the latest
Australian cricket scores ticked off before their eyes. With the big
Christmas stock we've got in we ought to keep half a dozen assistants
hard at work, but as it is my nephew Jimmy and myself can pretty well
attend to it ourselves. It's a nice stock of goods, too, if I could only
run it off in a few weeks time, but there's no chance of that--not unless
the London line was to get snowed up for a fortnight before Christmas. I
did have a sort of idea of engaging Miss Luffcombe to give recitations
during afternoons; she made a great hit at the Post Office entertainment