"Whatever is here is yours, Catherine," she cried. "Everything."
She pointed to her poor stool, her broom of green twigs, and the five or six logs on her hearth. Catherine gazed on all in silence for a few moments, and then said:
"They are not very grand, but they are substantial, and the Cossacks will not easily burn your house."
"No, they will not burn it," laughed Hexe-Baizel; "they would need all the trees in the county of Dabo to only warm the walls. Ha, ha, ha!"
The partisans, after many toils and dangers, felt the want of repose. Each man hastened to place his musket against the wall and stretch himself on the floor. Marc-Dives opened the door of the inner cavern for them, where they were at least sheltered, and then sallied forth with Hullin to examine the position.
Chapter XXIII.
On the rock of Falkenstein, high in the blue air, rises a round tower, the base of which is broken and sunken. This tower, covered with brambles, hawthorn, and myrtle, seems old as the mountain itself; it has survived French, Germans, and Swedes. Its stones and mortar have become a solid mass, from which it is almost impossible to break the smallest fragment, and the whole structure wears a gloomy air of mystery which bears back the mind to ages long past—ages which have no place in the memories of man. Here was Marc-Dives wont to lie in ambush when the wild geese flew south—if he had nothing better to do; and here sometimes at night-fall, when their flocks pierced the fogs and swept round in a broad circle before going to rest, would he bring down two or three of their number—a feat which rejoiced the heart of Hexe-Baizel, who wasted no time in preparing them for the spit. Here too, in autumn, did Marc often set snares among the bushes, where the thrushes loved to perch; and to crown all, the old tower served him as a storehouse for his winter's stock of wood. How often was Hexe-Baizel, when the northern gales blew fierce, and the crashing of branches and groans of the neighboring forests rose like the dashing of a tempest-tost ocean—how often then was Hexe-Baizel almost torn from that old tower and hurled to the opposite Kilberi! But her long fingers held fast to the vines, and the wind only flapped her coarse hair about her head.
Dives, perceiving that his wood, covered with snow and wet with every rain, gave more smoke than flame, made a roof of planks for his storehouse; and the smuggler relates that, while laying the rafters, he found a screech-owl white as snow, blind and feeble, but provided with field-mice and bats in abundance. For this reason he called it the "Grandmother of the country," supposing that all the other birds fed it on account of its extreme old age.
Toward evening the partisans—placed on the lookout on every terrace of the rock—saw white uniforms appear in the surrounding gorges. Masses of men debouched from the depths on all sides at once, showing an intention to blockade Falkenstein. Marc-Dives seeing this, became thoughtful. "If they surround us," said he musingly, "we cannot procure provisions; we must surrender or die of hunger."