Into the snow-locked forests of Upper Hungary steal wolves in winter; but there is a footfall
worse than theirs to knock upon the heart of the lonely traveller.

One December evening Elspet, the young, newly wedded wife of the woodman Stefan, came
hurrying over the lower slopes of the White Mountains from the town where she had been all day
marketing. She carried a basket with provisions on her arm; her plump cheeks were like a couple
of cold apples; her breath spoke short, but more from nervousness than exhaustion. It was
nearing dusk, and she was glad to see the little lonely church in the hollow below, the hub, as it
were, of many radiating paths through the trees, one of which was the road to her own warm
cottage yet a half-mile away.

She paused a moment at the foot of the slope, undecided about entering the little chill, silent
building and making her plea for protection to the great battered stone image of Our Lady of
Succour which stood within by the confessional box; but the stillness and the growing darkness
decided her, and she went on. A spark of fire glowing through the presbytery window seemed to
repel rather than attract her, and she was glad when the convolutions of the path hid it from her
sight. Being new to the district, she had seen very little of Father Ruhl as yet, and somehow the
penetrating knowledge and burning eyes of the pastor made her feel uncomfortable.

The soft drift, the lane of tall, motionless pines, stretched on in a quiet like death. Somewhere
the sun, like a dead fire, had fallen into opalescent embers faintly luminous: they were enough
only to touch the shadows with a ghastlier pallor. It was so still that the light crunch in the snow
of the girl’s own footfalls trod on her heart like a desecration.

Suddenly there was something near her that had not been before. It had come like a shadow,
without more sound or warning. It was here—there—behind her. She turned, in mortal panic,
and saw a wolf. With a strangled cry and trembling limbs she strove to hurry on her way; and
always she knew, though there was no whisper of pursuit, that the gliding shadow followed in
her wake. Desperate in her terror, she stopped once more and faced it.

A wolf!—was it a wolf? O who could doubt it! Yet the wild expression in those famished eyes,
so lost, so pitiful, so mingled of insatiable hunger and human need! Condemned, for its
unspeakable sins, to take this form with sunset, and so howl and snuffle about the doors of men
until the blessed day released it. A werewolf—not a wolf.

That terrific realization of the truth smote the girl as with a knife out of darkness: for an instant
she came near fainting. And then a low moan broke into her heart and flooded it with pity. So
lost, so infinitely hopeless. And so pitiful—yes, in spite of all, so pitiful. It had sinned, beyond
any sinning that her innocence knew or her experience could gauge; but she was a woman, very
blest, very happy, in her store of comforts and her surety of love. She knew that it was forbidden
to succour these damned and nameless outcasts, to help or sympathize with them in any way.

But—
There was good store of meat in her basket, and who need ever know or tell? With shaking
hands she found and threw a sop to the desolate brute—then, turning, sped upon her way.
But at home her secret sin stood up before her, and, interposing between her husband and
herself, threw its shadow upon both their faces. What had she dared—what done? By her own act
forfeited her birthright of innocence; by her own act placed herself in the power of the evil to
which she had ministered. All that night she lay in shame and horror, and all the next day, until
Stefan had come about his dinner and gone again, she moved in a dumb agony. Then, driven
unendurably by the memory of his troubled, bewildered face, as twilight threatened she put on
her cloak and went down to the little church in the hollow to confess her sin.

‘Mother, forgive, and save me,’ she whispered, as she passed the statue. Now for a break from the story. Where do you think that this came from? Another site, that's where. Sorry if you find this annoying, but you might want to find a site that does the work instead of stealing someone else's work.

After ringing the bell for the confessor, she had not knelt long at the confessional box in the
dim chapel, cold and empty as a waiting vault, when the chancel rail clicked, and the footsteps of
Father Ruhl were heard rustling over the stones. He came, he took his seat behind the grating;
and, with many sighs and falterings, Elspet avowed her guilt. And as, with bowed head, she
ended, a strange sound answered her—it was like a little laugh, and yet not so much like a laugh
as a snarl. With a shock as of death she raised her face. It was Father Ruhl who sat there—and
yet it was not Father Ruhl. In that time of twilight his face was already changing, narrowing,
becoming wolfish—the eyes rounded and the jaw slavered. She gasped, and shrunk back; and at
that, barking and snapping at the grating, with a wicked look he dropped—and she heard him
coming. Sheer horror lent her wings. With a scream she sprang to her feet and fled. Her cloak
caught in something—there was a wrench and crash and, like a flood, oblivion overswept her.

It was the old deaf and near senile sacristan who found them lying there, the woman unhurt but
insensible, the priest crushed out of life by the fall of the ancient statue, long tottering to its
collapse. She recovered, for her part: for his, no one knows where he lies buried. But there were
dark stories of a baying pack that night, and of an empty, bloodstained pavement when they
came to seek for the body.