“Well! I cannot hear the dogs; they and the fox must all be lost in this infernal cavern.”
“They were too close up,” said one of the guards, “to have lost scent all at once. Besides, we should hear them from one side or another. They must, as Biscarrat says, be in this grotto.”
“But then,” said one of the young men, “why don’t they give tongue?”
“It is strange!” muttered another.
“Well, but,” said a fourth, “let us go into this grotto. Does it happen to be forbidden we should enter it?”
“No,” replied Biscarrat. “Only, as it looks as dark as a wolf’s mouth, we might break our necks in it.”
“Witness the dogs,” said a guard, “who seem to have broken theirs.”
“What the devil can have become of them?” asked the young men in chorus. And every master called his dog by his name, whistled to him in his favorite mode, without a single one replying to either call or whistle.
“It is perhaps an enchanted grotto,” said Biscarrat; “let us see.” And, jumping from his horse, he made a step into the grotto.
“Stop! stop! I will accompany you,” said one of the guards, on seeing Biscarrat disappear in the shades of the cavern’s mouth.