That afternoon Gil Couteau sat again in the courtyard with his sword across his knees while the people of the castle stared wonderingly at his set face and fixed expression.
At sunset, when the shadows were creeping out of the forest and when the howling of the wolves, with which the countryside seemed alive, had set the teeth of every man in the castle chattering with vague but awful horror, he strapped his long sword across his back, untied a skiff at the riverside and rowed slowly away toward Barnecan.
Dawn was faintly streaking the sky when he reached his destination. The fortress rose steeply out of the river on one side, but the stones of which it was built were so roughly laid that it was easy for him to tie the boat securely. Feeling his way inch by inch, he crept up the steep wall. There were ivy and a few window-slits to help him, but many times he was forced to retrace part of his way, thinking each move would be his last.
His fingers were torn and bleeding; his limbs ached as though he had been on a torture-rack, when at last he arrived at an embrasure for which he had been making since he had seen a light gleaming dully there as he approached the stronghold.
Carefully he raised his eyes above the bottom of the slit and peered within. What he saw there set his heart thumping, half with terror, half anger. On a stool in one corner of a small bare room crouched Lady Constance, her clothing tom and disheveled; her blond curls blood-smeared and tangled.
At the other side of the room, before the door, crouched a gigantic gray wolf. Couteau felt his scalp stir as he looked, for this was something uncanny; something dreadful that chilled his French blood, though he had heard of such horrors since his childhood.
Occasionally the beast would rise and pace stealthily back and forth before the door, walking with a slight limp of the right front leg, he noticed, and at such times its head was fully five feet above the floor. Then it would stop, and, sitting on its haunches, leer wickedly at the crouching girl, but never approach her.
Wondering at this, Gil looked at her again, and saw that she held against her breast a needlelike dagger, ready to press it home, should the beast come nearer. He felt his heart swell with pride in her, at her brave spirit and fearless courage.
It was quite light now, and daring to wait no longer, Gil loosened his sword and squeezed himself through the embrasure as quickly as the narrow space permitted. Quick as he was, the monster had heard him, and was upon him instantly as he leaped to the floor. Then began a struggle, the remembrance of which would sometimes, even years later, wake Couteau from sleep, sweating with terror.
It was like no fight he had ever had, nor was it like the wolf-hunts and boar-stickings in which he had taken part. The loup-garou fought with human intelligence, dodging Gil’s swordthrusts with the speed of light, and always, always, parrying for a leap at his throat, which, if successful, would mean an instant end to the battle.
Gil’s long sword was almost an impediment in that crowded space. He longed for a dagger as he felt himself slowly but surely giving ground before the plunges of the werewolf. Then, almost before he was aware, the end came. He aimed a slashing stroke at the animal’s neck, just where it joined the shoulders, but the other, with an almost impossible contortion, jerked itself out of the way,
