"Yes, my wife is dead, and that is what drove me from the woods. I could not see the valley of the Roche Creuse without sorrow, and so I have come hither. I hunt but little in the underbrush, and if the pack happen to go in that direction, I leave them to themselves and turn back again, trying to think of other things."
Sperver had become melancholy. His head had fallen on his breast, and he remained silent. I regretted having recalled these sad images to his mind. Then, reflecting once more on the Black Plague crouching in the snow, I shivered. How singular that a single word had thrown us into a train of dismal recollections! A whole world of retrospection had been invoked by the merest accident.
I know not how long our silence had lasted, when a deep, terrible growl, like the sound of distant thunder, made us tremble. We looked at the dog. He still held his half-eaten bone between his fore-paws, but with raised head, ears pricked up, and shining eyes, he was listening,—listening in the dead silence, and a tremor of rage ran along his back.
Sperver and I looked at each other anxiously; not a sound, not a murmur, for the wind outside had fallen, and we could have heard the least noise; nothing, save the deep, continued growl, which seemed to come from deep down in the dog's chest. Suddenly the animal sprang up and leaped against the wall, with a short, harsh, ominous bark that made the arches resound as if thunder were rolling away along the empty passages. Lieverlé, with his head low down, seemed to see through the granite, and his teeth, bared to their roots, glistened like snow. He still growled, pausing now and then for a moment to sniff along the bottom of the wall; then he sprang up again angrily, and seemed trying to tear away the stone with his fore-paws.
We were watching him, unable to understand the cause of his excitement, when a second howl, more fearful than the first, brought us to our feet.
"Lieverlé," cried Sperver, springing towards him, "for heaven's sake, what ails you? Are you going mad?"
He seized a log, and began to sound the wall, which, however, gave forth only a dull, dense sound. There was apparently no hollow in it, but still the dog maintained the same posture.
"Decidedly, Lieverlé," said the huntsman, "you have had a nightmare. Come, lie down, and don't set our nerves on edge any more."
At the same moment we heard a sound outside. The door opened, and the big, fat face of honest Tobias Offenloch, with his round lantern in one hand and his stick in the other, and his three-cornered hat on one side of his head, appeared smiling and genial in the doorway.
"Greeting, worthy company!" he exclaimed; "what the devil are you doing here?"