wood," she said to herself, "for the graylegs are out to-night."
Shortly afterwards she heard a piercing cry and saw a wolf lumber past her window with something in its mouth that struggled and fought. She thought it looked like a child. But whose child could it be? Her own little ones were right beside her, and there were no other children on the farm. Close behind the first wolf came another; it, too, had a child in its gape. Grandmother couldn't sit still any longer. She jumped up so suddenly she knocked over the chair, and rushed through the kitchen out into the yard.… Then she stood stock still. Before her was the calm, beautiful spring evening; not a sign of snow—not a wolf in sight.
She must have fallen asleep over her knitting, she thought, and been dreaming. Yet she felt that back of it all lay something serious.
"We'll have to take precious good care of the little ones," she said to the maids. "That was no dream, it was a warning."
However, the children thrived and waxed fat and rosy. The dream, or vision, or whatever it was, soon passed out of mind, like much else of the same sort.
Along in August a company of poor soldiers came to Mårbacka. The men were ragged, famished, and ill. Their bodies were nothing but skin-and-bone and in their eyes was the look of the ravening wolf. The mark of death was on them all.
