[figure description] Page 065.[end figure description]

IN the afternoon of the same day, Earle
was about to issue from the hostelry of
the Cat and Bell, when a thundering
knock at his door made him turn quickly
toward a brace of pistols lying upon the
table.

“Has my good friend Sir Murdaugh Westbrooke
perchance gained an inkling of my real
character, and of what is in store for him?”
he muttered. And turning to the door,—

“Come in!” he said.

As he uttered the words, he cocked one of his
pistols, prepared for whatever was to come.

The door opened, and the huge “wolf” with
whom he had fought in the morning, entered.

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His head nearly touched the low ceiling.
His countenance was a great mass of shaggy
hair. Low down on his forehead grew a similar
mass, and he resembled rather a wild animal
than a human being.

“I be come to see you, master,” said the
wolf.

“And who are you?” retorted Earle.

“My name be Goliath, master,” returned the
Anak, “and the wolves are waiting to catch you
up and make you one of us.”

Earle gazed at the speaker, and saw that this
man was a friend. If there was any doubt of
the fact, his next words removed it.

“I felt your hand to-day, master,” said
Goliath: “it is heavy, but I want to feel it
again.”

As he spoke, Goliath extended a paw as large
nearly as a ham, and half covered with hair.

“Good!” said Earle; “there it is.”

And he reached out his own. It was small,
bronzed, and had the grasp of a vice.

The giant winced.

“It hits hard, and it hits fair,” he said. “I be
sorry I quarrelled, master; but I am going to
make up that.”

Suddenly he turned up Earle's cuff. A blue

[figure description] Page 067.[end figure description]

anchor was tattooed, sailor-fashion, on the white
wrist.

“I knew that,” said Goliath; “nobody but a
sailor would 'a' ventured as you did to-day.”

“Well, I am a sailor.”

“Which makes it all the better; you knocked
me down, and after that I would 'a' fought you.
You went out in the surf—and the 'longshoremen
are a-going to make you a wolf!”

As he spoke a loud roar was heard in the
street without,—evidently uttered by the
wolves.

Earle laughed, and muttered,—

“A strange life this of mine!—to be made
a chief of the Iroquois in Canada, and one of
the wolves in Wales!”

The roar was again heard.

“The wolves be waiting, master!” said
Goliath.

“Ready!” said Earle.

And walking beside the giant, he descended to
the street, where a great crowd of tattered, fierece-looking
and shaggy-bearded 'longshoremen were
gathered with intent to do him honor.

“Stop your howling!” shouted Goliath,
“and be orderly, will you!”

The roar ceased for a moment, but was

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resumed an instant afterwards with fresh zest.
The noise seemed to excite the crowd. From
hoarse shouts they proceeded to action. Earle
suddenly found himself caught up, borne aloft
in trimph, and then his captors at the head of
whom was Goliath, surged into the low-pitched
common-room of the inn, where Earle was
placed upon a table in the midst.

At his side, on the floor stood Goliah, one
hand on his shoulder.

“What be your name, master?” said the
gaint.

A singular sentiment moved the sailor. Content
to assume a false name with indifferent persons
or enemies,—with these rough friends it
was different. Something uncontrollable within
him made him answer,—

“Edmond Earle!”

At that reply a man who had been seated in
a dark corner started, rose suddenly, and went
out of the inn. As he disappeared, one of the'
longshoremen scowled after him and laid his
hand on his knife. The man who had gone out
was Wilde, the emissary of Sir Murdangh Westbrooke;
and Earle, in thus uttering his real
name, had committed a terrible imprudence.

He did not see Wilde, however. The wolves

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were admitting him, with rude ceremonies, into
the pale of their order.

A gigantic beaker of usquebaugh was first
raised to his lips; each drank from it in turn,
and then the residue was poured upon the
floor.

As the liquor fell from the beaker, Goliath
exclaimed, in his voice of thunder,—

“So the blood of all who hunt the wolves
shall be poured out!”

And clapping Earle on the shoulder,—

“From to-day you be a wolf, master!” he
said.

The wolves roared in approbation.

“Join hands!” thundered Goliath.

At the word the wild figures linked hands
and began to dance around the table. Earle
had never witnessed so strange a spectacle.
There was something at once ferocious and
grotesque in these ragged figures circling the
table in their mad dance. Three times they
thus whirled around him, and then the circle
broke and they again caught the sailor up on
their shoulders. All resistance was impossible.
He was borne forth and carried through the
streets in triumph.

When, an hour afterwards, he was realeased,

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and woke as it were from this orgy of dream-land,
he saw Goliath standing beside him, and
heard the giant say,—

“You be one of us now, master; and woe be
to him who lays his hand on you!”

At the same moment the man Wilde entered
Westbrooke Hall, and hastened to the baronet.

“Well?” said the master.

“I have something terrible to report, sir!”
said the man.

“What?”

And the baronet rose, as if on steel springs.

“The person who visited you here last night,
sir—”

Wilde paused.

“Speak!” shouted the baronet, shaking him
by the coolar.

“Is—who would have believed it—!”

The baronet's hand passed to the man's
throat.

“Is—is—” muttered Wilde, in a half-strangled
voice— “Edmond—Earle!”

The baronet turned ghastly pale, and stared
at the speaker with stupefaction.

“Edmond—Earle!” he said in a low voice,
“the Edmond Earle?”

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“The same, sir. There was something familiar
in his look.”

The baronet's eyes blazed.

“Then he is not dead, after all!”

“No, since we have seen him sir, and I have
heard him give his name as Earle.”

In a few words the man related what had
occurred at the inn.

“Yes—I see now—I was deceived,” said
the baronet in a low tone. “He is here—cool
and determined—ready, and he knows my
secret. Fool!—from this moment he is dead!
Dead men tell no tales.”

p517-077

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