"Is this really so?"
"Positively."
There was a long silence; our horses tossing their heads at each other as if in salute, pawed the snow impatiently. Lieverlé yawned expectantly and stretched out his long, snake-like body, and Sperver sat motionless, with his hand resting on his rifle.
"Well, then, we will try to take her living," he said at length; "we will handle her with kid gloves, since it must needs be so; but it is not such an easy matter as you think, Gaston."
Pointing with his extended hand to the mountains which lay unrolled about us in the form of a great amphitheatre, he added:
"You see before us the Altenberg, the Birkenwald, the Schneeberg, the Oxenhorn, the Rhethal, and the Behrenkopf, and if we were up a little higher, we could see fifty other peaks, extending clear into the plain of the Palatinate. Within this distance are rocks, ravines, defiles, torrents, and endless forests, and the old woman wanders everywhere through this wilderness. She has a sure foot and a good eye, and can scent you a good league away; so you see we shall have a pretty chase before us."
"If it were an easy thing to do, I shouldn't have chosen you out of all the people of the Castle."
"That sounds all very well. Still, if we can once get on her trail, I don't deny that with courage and patience—"
"As for her trail, don't worry about that; I will put you on it myself."
"You?"