"Werewolf" - читать интересную книгу автора (Housman Clarence)

strange and uncourteous departure; or her easy tale of the
circumstances of her return; or to watch her bearing as she heard
the sad tale of little Rol.

The swiftest runner in the country-side had started on his hardest
race: little less than three leagues and back, which he reckoned to
accomplish in two hours, though the night was moonless and the
way rugged. He rushed against the still cold air till it felt like a
wind upon his face. The dim homestead sank below the ridges at
his back, and fresh ridges of snowlands rose out of the obscure
horizon-level to drive past him as the stirless air drove, and sink
away behind into obscure level again. He took no conscious heed
of landmarks, not even when all sign of a path was gone under
depths of snow. His will was set to reach his goal with unexampled
speed; and thither by instinct his physical forces bore him, without
one definite thought to guide.

And the idle brain lay passive, inert, receiving into its vacancy
restless siftings of past sights and sounds; Rol, weeping, laughing,
playing, coiled in the arms of that dreadful Thing: Tyr O Tyr!
white fangs in the black jowl: the women who wept on the foolish
puppy, precious for the child's last touch: footprints from pine
wood to door: the smiling face among furs, of such womanly
beauty smiling smiling: and Sweyn's face.

'Sweyn, Sweyn, O Sweyn, my brother!'

Sweyn's angry laugh possessed his ear within the sound of the
wind of his speed; Sweyn's scorn assailed more quick and keen
than the biting cold at his throat. And yet he was unimpressed by
any thought of how Sweyn's anger and scorn would rise, if this
errand were known.

Sweyn was sceptic. His utter disbelief in Christian's testimony
regarding the footprints were based upon positive scepticism. His
reason refused to bend in accepting the possibility of the
supernatural materialised. That a living beast could ever be other
than palpably bestial pawed, toothed, shagged, and eared as such,
was to him incredible; far more that a human presence could be
transformed from its god-like aspect, upright, freehanded, with
brows, and speech, and laughter. The wild and fearful legends that
he had known from childhood and then believed, he regarded now
as built upon facts distorted, overlaid by imagination, and
quickened by superstition. Even the strange summons at the
threshold, that he himself had vainly answered, was, after the first
shock of surprise, rationally explained by him as malicious foolery
on the part of some clever trickster, who witheld the key to the
enigma.

To the younger brother all life was a spiritual mystery, veiled from