‘I have here some good eatables,’ said the woman tranquilly; ‘on my festival day it is natural that I should have provision with me. I have five good blood-sausages; in the town shops they cost twenty-five heller each. Things are dear in the town shops.’

‘I will give you fifty heller apiece for a couple of them,’ said Abbleway with some enthusiasm.

‘In a railway accident things become very dear,’ said the woman; ‘these blood-sausages are four kronen apiece.’

‘Four kronen!’ exclaimed Abbleway; ‘four kronen for a blood sausage!’

‘You cannot get them any cheaper on this train,’ said the woman, with relentless logic, ‘because there aren’t any others to get. In Agram you can buy them cheaper, and in Paradise no doubt they will be given to us for nothing, but here they cost four kronen each. I have a small piece of Emmenthaler cheese and a honey-cake and a piece of bread that I can let you have. That will be another three kronen, eleven kronen in all. There is a piece of ham, but that I cannot let you have on my name-day.’

Abbleway wondered to himself what price she would have put on the ham, and hurried to pay her the eleven kronen before her emergency tariff expanded into a famine tariff. As he was taking possession of his modest store of eatables he suddenly heard a noise which set his heart thumping in a miserable fever of fear. There was a scraping and shuffling as of some animal or animals trying to climb up to the footboard. In another moment, through the snow-encrusted glass of the carriage window, he saw a gaunt prick-eared hear, with gaping jaw and lolling tongue and gleaming teeth; a second later another head shot up.

‘There are hundreds of them,’ whispered Abbleway; ‘they have scented us. They will tear the carriage to pieces. We shall be devoured.’

‘Not me, on my name-day. The holy Maria Kleophä would not permit it,’ said the woman with provoking calm.

The heads dropped down from the window and an uncanny silence fell on the beleaguered carriage. Abbleway neither moved nor spoke. Perhaps the brutes had not clearly seen or winded the human occupants of the carriage, and had prowled away on some other errand of rapine.

The long torture-laden minutes passed slowly away.

‘It grows cold,’ said the woman suddenly, crossing over to the far end of the carriage, where the heads had appeared. ‘The heating apparatus does not work any longer. See, over there beyond the trees, there is a chimney with smoke coming from it. It is not far, and the snow has nearly stopped. I shall find a path through the forest to that house with the chimney.’

‘But the wolves!’ exclaimed Abbleway; ‘they may—’

‘Not on my name-day,’ said the woman obstinately, and before he could stop her she had opened the door and climbed down into the snow. A moment later he hid his face in his hands; two gaunt lean figures rushed upon her from the forest. No doubt she had courted her fate, but Abbleway had no wish to see a human being torn to pieces and devoured be fore his eyes.

When he looked at last a new sensation of scandalised astonishment took possession of him. He had been straitly brought up in a small English town, and he was not prepared to he the witness of a miracle. The wolves were not doing anything worse to the woman than drench her with snow as they gambolled round her.

A short, joyous bark revealed the clue to the situation.