"Could you reach this flask if I threw it over to you?" asked Ulrich
suddenly; "there is good wine in it, and one may as well be as

comfortable as one can. Let us drink, even if to-night one of us
dies."

"No, I can scarcely see anything; there is so much blood caked round
my eyes," said Georg, "and in any case I don't drink wine with an

enemy."
Ulrich was silent for a few minutes, and lay listening to the weary

screeching of the wind. An idea was slowly forming and growing in
his brain, an idea that gained strength every time that he looked

across at the man who was fighting so grimly against pain and
exhaustion. In the pain and languor that Ulrich himself was feeling

the old fiercehatred seemed to be dying down.
"Neighbour," he said presently, "do as you please if your men come

first. It was a fair compact. But as for me, I've changed my mind.
If my men are the first to come you shall be the first to be helped,

as though you were my guest. We have quarrelled like devils all our
lives over this stupid strip of forest, where the trees can't even

stand upright in a breath of wind. Lying here to-night thinking
I've come to think we've been rather fools; there are better things

in life than getting the better of a boundarydispute. Neighbour,
if you will help me to bury the old quarrel I--I will ask you to be

my friend."
Georg Znaeym was silent for so long that Ulrich thought, perhaps, he

had fainted with the pain of his injuries. Then he spoke slowly and
in jerks.

"How the whole region would stare and gabble if we rode into the
market-square together. No one living can remember seeing a Znaeym

and a von Gradwitz talking to one another in friendship. And what
peace there would be among the forester folk if we ended our feud

to-night. And if we choose to make peace among our people there is
none other to interfere, no interlopers from outside . . . You would

come and keep the Sylvester night beneath my roof, and I would come
and feast on some high day at your castle . . . I would never fire a

shot on your land, save when you invited me as a guest; and you
should come and shoot with me down in the marshes where the wildfowl

are. In all the countryside there are none that could hinder if we
willed to make peace. I never thought to have wanted to do other

than hate you all my life, but I think I have changed my mind about
things too, this last half-hour. And you offered me your wineflask

. . . Ulrich von Gradwitz, I will be your friend."
For a space both men were silent, turning over in their minds the

wonderful changes that this dramaticreconciliation would bring
about. In the cold, gloomy forest, with the wind tearing in fitful

gusts through the naked branches and whistling round the tree-
trunks, they lay and waited for the help that would now bring

release and succour to both parties. And each prayed a private
prayer that his men might be the first to arrive, so that he might

be the first to show honourable attention to the enemy that had
become a friend.

Presently, as the wind dropped for a moment, Ulrich broke silence.
"Let's shout for help," he said; he said; "in this lull our voices

may carry a little way."
"They won't carry far through the trees and undergrowth," said

Georg, "but we can try. Together, then."
The two raised their voices in a prolonged hunting call.

"Together again," said Ulrich a few minutes later, after listening
in vain for an answering halloo.

"I heard nothing but the pestilential wind," said Georg hoarsely.
There was silence again for some minutes, and then Ulrich gave a

joyful cry.
"I can see figures coming through the wood. They are following in

the way I came down the hillside."
Both men raised their voices in as loud a shout as they could

muster.
"They hear us! They've stopped. Now they see us. They're running

down the hill towards us," cried Ulrich.
"How many of them are there?" asked Georg.

"I can't see distinctly," said Ulrich; "nine or ten,"
"Then they are yours," said Georg; "I had only seven out with me."

"They are making all the speed they can, brave lads," said Ulrich
gladly.

"Are they your men?" asked Georg. "Are they your men?" he repeated
impatiently as Ulrich did not answer.

"No," said Ulrich with a laugh, the idiotic chattering laugh of a
man unstrung with hideous fear.

"Who are they?" asked Georg quickly, straining his eyes to see what
the other would gladly not have seen.

"Wolves."
QUAIL SEED

"The outlook is not encouraging for us smaller businesses," said Mr.
Scarrick to the artist and his sister, who had taken rooms over his

suburban grocery" target="_blank" title="n.食品杂货店">grocery store. "These big concerns are offering all sorts
of attractions to the shopping public which we couldn't afford to

imitate, even on a small scale--reading-rooms and play-rooms and
gramophones and Heaven knows what. People don't care to buy half a

pound of sugar nowadays unless they can listen to Harry Lauder and
have the latest Australian cricket scores ticked off before their

eyes. With the big Christmas stock we've got in we ought to keep
half a dozen assistants hard at work, but as it is my nephew Jimmy

and myself can pretty well attend to it ourselves. It's a nice
stock of goods, too, if I could only run it off in a few weeks time,

but there's no chance of that--not unless the London line was to get
snowed up for a fortnight before Christmas. I did have a sort of

idea of engaging Miss Luffcombe to give recitations during
afternoons; she made a great hit at the Post Office entertainment

with her rendering of 'Little Beatrice's Resolve'."
"Anything less likely to make your shop a fashionable shopping

centre I can't imagine," said the artist, with a very genuine
shudder; "if I were trying to decide between the merits of Carlsbad

plums and confected figs as a winter dessert it would infuriate me
to have my train of thought entangled with little Beatrice's resolve

to be an Angel of Light or a girl scout. No," he continued, "the
desire to get something thrown in for nothing is a ruling passion

with the feminine shopper, but you can't afford to pander
effectively to it. Why not appeal to another instinct; which

dominates not only the woman shopper but the male shopper--in fact,
the entire human race?"

"What is that instinct, sir?" said the grocer.
* * *

Mrs. Greyes and Miss Fritten had missed the 2.18 to Town, and as
there was not another train till 3.12 they thought that they might

as well make their grocery" target="_blank" title="n.食品杂货店">grocery purchases at Scarrick's. It would not be
sensational, they agreed, but it would still be shopping.

For some minutes they had the shop almost to themselves, as far as
customers were concerned, but while they were debating the

respective virtues and blemishes of two competing brands of anchovy
paste they were startled by an order, given across the counter, for

six pomegranates and a packet of quail seed. Neither commodity was
in general demand in that neighbourhood. Equally unusual was the

style and appearance of the customer; about sixteen years old, with
dark olive skin, large dusky eyes, and think, low-growing, blue-

black hair, he might have made his living as an artist's model. As
a matter of fact he did. The bowl of beaten brass that he produced

for the reception of his purchases was distinctly the most
astonishing variation on the string bag or marketing basket of

suburban civilisation that his fellow-shoppers had ever seen. He
threw a gold piece, apparently of some exotic currency, across the