A caution to her to be silent was all the reply I could make; and, leaning a little lower, so as to bring my ear nearer to the ground, I listened.
The suspense was short. I heard the sound again. My first conjecture was right. It was the “growl” of a hound!
There was no mistaking that prolonged and deep-toned note. I was too fond a disciple of Saint Hubert not to recognise the bay of a long-eared Molossian. Though distant and low, like the hum of a forest bee, I was not deceived in the sound. It fell upon my ears with a terrible import!
And why terrible was the baying of a hound? To me above all others, whose ears, attuned to the “tally ho!” and the “view hilloa!” regarded these sounds as the sweetest of music? Why terrible? Ah! you must think of the circumstances in which I was placed—you must think, too, of the hours I spent with the snake-charmer—of the tales he told me in that dark tree-cave—the stories of runaways, of sleuth-dogs, of man-hunters, and “nigger-hunts,”—practices long thought to be confined to Cuba, but which I found as rife upon the soil of Louisiana,—you must think of all these, and then you will understand why I trembled at the distant baying of a hound.
The howl I heard was still very distant. It came from the direction of Gayarre’s house. It broke forth at intervals. It was not like the utterance of a hound upon the trail, but that of dogs just cleared from the kennel, and giving tongue to their joy at the prospect of sport.
Fearful apprehensions were stirred within me at the moment. A terrible conjecture rushed across my brain. They were after us with hounds!