"No, I am dark-coloured, because I wear a wolf-skin sometimes."

"A wolf-skin!" echoed the girl; "and pray who gave it you?"

"One called Pierre Labourant."

"There is no man of that name hereabouts. Where does he live?"

A scream of laughter mingled with howls, and breaking into strange
gulping bursts of fiendlike merriment from the strange boy.

The little girls recoiled, and the youngest took refuge behind Jeanne.

"Do you want to know Pierre Labourant, lass? Hey, he is a man with an
iron chain about his neck, which he is ever engaged in gnawing. Do you
want to know where he lives, lass? Ha., in a place of gloom and fire,
where there are many companions, some seated on iron chairs, burning,
burning; others stretched on glowing beds, burning too. Some cast men
upon blazing coals, others roast men before fierce flames, others
again plunge them into caldrons of liquid fire."

The girls trembled and looked at each other with scared faces, and
then again at the hideous being which crouched before them.

"You want to know about the wolf-skin cape?" continued he. "Pierre
Labourant gave me that; he wraps it round me, and every Monday,
Friday, and Sunday, and for about an hour at dusk every other day, I
am a wolf, a were-wolf. I have killed dogs and drunk their blood; but
little girls taste better, their flesh is tender and sweet, their