blood rich and warm. I have eaten many a maiden, as I have been on my
raids together with my nine companions. I am a were-wolf! Ah, ha! if
the sun were to set I would soon fall on one of you and make a meal of
you!" Again he burst into one of his frightful paroxysms of laughter,
and the girls unable to endure it any longer, fled with precipitation.

Near the village of S. Antoine de Pizon, a little girl of the name of
Marguerite Poirier, thirteen years old, was in the habit of tending
her sheep, in company with a lad of the same age, whose name was Jean
Grenier. The same lad whom Jeanne Gaboriant had questioned.

The little girl often complained to her parents of the conduct of the
boy: she said that he frightened her with his horrible stories; but
her father and mother thought little of her complaints, till one day
she returned home before her usual time so thoroughly alarmed that she
had deserted her flock. Her parents now took the matter up and
investigated it. Her story was as follows:--

Jean had often told her that he had sold himself to the devil, and
that he had acquired the power of ranging the country after dusk, and
sometimes in broad day, in the form of a wolf. He had assured her that
he had killed and devoured many dogs, but that he found their flesh
less palatable than the flesh of little girls, which he regarded as a
supreme delicacy. He had told her that this had been tasted by him not
unfrequently, but he had specified only two instances: in one he had
eaten as much as he could, and had thrown the rest to a wolf, which
had come up during the repast. In the other instance he had bitten to
death another little girl, had lapped her blood, and, being in a
famished condition at the time, had devoured every portion of her,
with the exception of the arms and shoulders.