consequence followed: their presence made the poor swine miserable
even to madness, and with the instinct of so many maniacs that in
death alone lies their deliverance, they rushed straight into the
loch."

"It may be so, Ian! But I want to hear how you got away from the
wolves."

"I fired and fired; and still they kept rushing on the tree-hole,
heaping themselves against it, those behind struggling up on the
backs of those next it, in a storm of rage and hunger and jealousy.
Not a few who had just helped to eat some of their fellows, were
themselves eaten in turn, and not a scrap of them left; but it was a
large pack, and it would have taken a long time to kill enough to
satisfy those that remained. I killed and killed until my ammunition
was gone, and then there was nothing for it but await the light.
When the morning began to dawn, they answered its light with
silence, and turning away swept like a shadow back into the wood.
Strange to tell, I heard afterwards that a child had been killed by
them in the earlier part of that same night. But even now sometimes,
as I lie awake, I grow almost doubtful whether the whole was not a
hideous dream.

"Not the less for that was what I went through between the time my
powder came to an end and the dawn of the morning, a real spiritual
fact.

"In the midst of the howling I grew so sleepy that the horrible
noise itself seemed to lull me while it kept me awake, and I fell
into a kind of reverie with which my dream came back and mingled. I