Free The Box of Delights by John Masefield

worrying, yapping snarl, as the rest of the pack came over the palisade in a body behind Kay. All rushed to meet them, flinging stones and lighted logs, shouting and
striking. Kay rushed with them. Three wolves had got over, and at their appearance all the cattle and sheep were stampeding in the pens. There were the three wolves all hackled and bristled,
snarling and slavering. Stones and burning embers fell all about them and hit them, they flinched and dripped and snarled but did not give way. Some men ran up and struck at them with spears and
adzes; they gave way then and leaped easily back over the paling, to their fellows. In another instant, the pack was over the stockade in the darkest of the Camp. ‘They’re over
again,’ Kay cried. It was plain that they were over, for the cattle and sheep now cried out in terror and again stampeded, this time in such force that they broke their pens and scattered.
The men shouted, and ran at the wolves. A woman thrust a great piece of gorse into the fire, lit it, and ran with it blazing. Kay seized another piece of gorse and did the same. A terrified little
cow charging past him upset him. When he was again on his feet he saw that one of the sheep had been bitten, not too badly, and that the wolves were driven off. One wolf in scrambling back had had
his backbone hacked through with an axe: another was being finished with spears. Three or four women had lighted gorse: for the moment the glare was too much for the wolves; they drew away; but
they had not yet given up the attack. Kay could see them not far away, sometimes as green eyes glaring, sometimes as darknesses in the snow. They were waiting for the fires to die down, getting
their breath, laying their plans, and licking their knocks and singes. Kay wondered how he was to get home to Seekings with the wolves in the fields. ‘They always said there aren’t any
wolves,’ he muttered, ‘but there could easily be wolves in places like Chester Hills, and now, in this wild winter, out they come.’
    The men now drove the stock to a space all lit and cornered by fire. Great flakes of fire floated away into the wind, as the dead leaves took flame: blots of snow fell hissing among the embers;
the cattle flinched at both.
    Kay had been reading a few days before that wolves are creatures of extraordinary cunning. Presently, he noticed that all the pack had shifted away from the palisade. The cattle inside the
enclosure became quieter. The men and women put out the flares which they were burning. There was a general slackening of the tension. Then, suddenly, from the darkest point of the Camp, there came
a howl and the noise of rushing bodies. The pack was over the stockade and into the Camp, and the cattle were stampeding, and the people shouting and lighting flares, and flinging weapons and
burning embers again. Kay said to himself, ‘This is the real attack. The others were only just feints to find out how the land lay.’ Two enormous wolves, with red eyes and gleaming
teeth, rushed directly at himself.
    He felt himself plucked by the arm. There was the little old Punch and Judy man, but no longer dressed like a Punch and Judy man: he was wearing a white stuff that shone. ‘You come here
beside me, Master Kay,’ he said. ‘Don’t you bother about those things: you only see them because I’m here. But it is like old times to me, Master Kay, to see this.
I’ve had fine times in winter nights, when the wolves were after the stock. Many times we would stand to, like this, almost till daylight. And, then, the thing to do is to follow them, Master
Kay, and never to let up till you’ve caught them; for the wolves lose heart, and they’re not half what you’d think they’d be when you see them like this.
    ‘But, I hoped that you would come, Master Kay, because other wolves are running. They’re running after me, and they’re running me very close. It’s not me they want,
it’s my Box of Delights that