"Then what did you mean about the dawn?"
Herrick was silent a moment.
"We're all well out of a bad business, Austin," he said then. "Don't
you think we'd better let it go at that?"
"But you had another theory. You had it that morning, after the
fire. You wouldn't tell me what it was. But I don't imagine you've
changed your mind altogether."
"No, I didn't change my mind," Herrick said. He put his hand into
his pocket. When he withdrew it there lay, on his palm, the little
battered silver button that Lennox had first shown us.
"You remember, Austin," he said, "that I recalled one or two facts to
your mind that evening. This was One of them. I want you to look at
it again."
"It is a button," I said. "A button such as you find on some
European peasants' costumes."
"Westphalian peasants, such as Menning's mother came from. Lennox
overlooked that fact, though as the button is badly defaced we can
excuse him. I'll help you out, Austin. It is of pure silver, very
soft, and it has been hammered to form a rough bullet that could be
fired from an old-fashioned muzzle-loading gun."
"I don't see how that helps you."
"I want you to think," he said, "what particular associations there
are with a silver bullet."
I stared at the little pellet in my hand, striving with some vague
recollection at the back of my mind.
"They were used against ... against ... some sort of witchcraft," I
said at last. "I don't see----"
"They were used against lycanthropy," said Herrick.
I stared at him. I suppose I looked stupid. I felt it. It was as
though some spectre, strange, ghastly, altogether of another world,
had risen up suddenly there before us in these quiet Pennsylvania
woods.
"A mania--subject imagines himself some beast, resulting in actual
physical transformations--exhibits depraved appetites--frequently
homicidal..." I recalled haltingly the words of an old treatise.
"They did more than believe they were animals," said Herrick dryly.
"They seem to have succeeded in impressing their belief pretty
strongly upon their neighbours and relatives. Did you ever dig into
old records of that sort, Austin? The were-wolf stories of the
Middle Ages? They're rather grim reading."