WHEN ‘WOLF!’ WAS CRIED. 
T was a shadowland, but not a shadowland 
of dreams. One could not dream in that 
place, because to go to sleep was never to 
wake up again. 
The scene was flat and bare and white, and 
there was an odd, elusive, tenuous mist over 
all. Perhaps the mist was frost floating in 
the air; I don’t know. Anyway, it was cold 
enough for any magic. 
A hare limped out of a tussock that should 
not have hidden anything larger than a mouse, 
ran a hundred yards, and—dissolved into the 
snow. A patch of snow broke off upwards, 
and became a gigantic, muffled white owl, 
which evaporated, making strange noises, 
into the tenuous haze. A fox’s head appeared, 
or, rather, the eyes of it did, floating, halo- 
like, above another foot-large tussock, and 
disappeared—goodness knows how or where. 
This was not in England, though it was in 
Europe. 
Then the sleigh passed, singing along in a 
finely powdered flurry of snow, the off-side 
horse galloping ‘free,’ the silver music of the 
bells laughing merrily at the gloom they could 
not dispel. And suddenly men whispered, 
