In place of answering this question, Wolf escorted his brother-in-law into the kitchen. There the boy’s youthful spirits, as he helped his sister dish up the supper, left Wolf time to slip out into the yard and possess his “soul,” such as it was, in five minute’s solitude.

Actuated by one of those capricious motions which he habitually obeyed, he moved over to the stunted laburnum-bush by the wall. On one branch only were there any buds; whereas their neighbour’s lilac, growing in the pig-man’s backyard, was covered with embryo leaves. He laid his hand on the trunk of this abject tree and looked up at the great velvet-black concavity above him, sprinkled with its minute points of light.

It was then that he distinctly heard, just as if the trunk of that little tree were a telegraphic receiver, “Wolf! Wolf! Wolf!” uttered in Christie’s voice, but with an intonation twisted out of her normal accent by some desperate necessity.