Note 6 — Chapter I · Decline of Demons.

Of this latter kind of hungry werewolf a specimen still occasionally revisits the glimpses of the moonshine which, for too many minds, still replaces daylight. So recently as January 17, 1878, one Kate Bedwell, a ‘pedlar, was sentenced in the Marylebone Police Court, London, to three months’ hard labour for obtaining various sums of money, amounting to 9s. 10d., by terrorism, from Eliza Rolf, a cook. The pedlar came to the plaintiff’s place of work and asked her if she would like to have her fortune told. Eliza replied, ‘No, I know it; it is hard work or starving.’ The fortune-teller asked her next time if she would have her planet ruled; the other still said no; but her nerves yielded when the ‘Drud’ told her ‘she lived under three stars, one good the others bad, and that she could disfigure her or turn her into something else.’ ‘Thank God, she did not!’ exclaimed the poor woman in court. However, she seemed to have trusted rather in her money than in any other providence for her immunity from an unhappy transformation. But even into this rare depth of ignorance enough light had penetrated to enable Eliza to cope with her werewolf in the civilised way of haling her before a magistrate. When Fenris gets three months with hard labour, he no doubt realises that he has exceeded his mental habitat, and that the invisible cords have bound him at last.