"War! War! War!"
Joel's large battle mastiff, fired by these cries, rose on his hind legs and laid his fore-paws on the breast of his master, who, while caressing his enormous head said:
"Yes, old Deber-Trud, like our tribe you will hunt the Romans.... The quarry shall be for you.... Your jaws shall be red with blood!... Wow! Wow, Deber-Trud! At the Romans! At the Romans!"
Hearing the well-known war-cry, the mastiff responded with furious barks, displaying fangs as redoubtable as a lion's. Hearing Deber-Trud, the outside watch-dogs, as well as those locked up in the kennels, answered him. Frightful was the war-cry raised by the pack.
"A good omen, friend Joel," observed the traveler. "Your dogs bark death to the enemy."
"Yes, yes; death to the enemy!" cried the brenn. "Thanks be to the gods, in our Breton Gaul, on the day of peril, the watch-dog becomes a war-dog! the draw-horse becomes a war-horse! the ox of the field a war-ox! the harvest carts chariots of war! the laborer a warrior! even our peaceful and fruitful earth turns to war and devours the stranger! at every step he finds a grave in our fathomless marshes, and his vessels vanish in the whirlpools of our bays which are more terrible in their calm than in the tempest of their fury!"
"Joel," now said Julyan, who had left the body of his friend, "I promised Armel to meet him to-morrow yonder—Such a death would be pleasant to me.... To die fighting the Romans is a duty.... What shall I do?"
"Ask to-morrow one of the druids of Karnak."
"And our sister Hena," said Albinik the mariner to his mother. "It is nearly a year I have not seen her.... She is surely still the pearl of the Isle of Sen? My wife Meroë charged me to remember her to Hena."
"You will see her to-morrow," answered Mamm' Margarid; and laying down her distaff she arose. It was the signal for the family to retire. Mamm' Margarid looked around and said: