cried Sperver, “we have got her at last!”
My heart leaped; we stood, closely pressed, the one against the other.
The dog growled low and deep.
“Cannot she escape?” I asked in a whisper.
“No; she is caught like a rat in a trap. There is no way out of La Marmite du Grand Gueulard but this, and everywhere all round the rocks are two hundred feet high. Now, vile hag, I hold you!”
He alighted in the ice-cold stream, handing me his bridle. I caught in the silence the click of the lock of his gun, and that slight noise threw me into a tremor of apprehension.
“Sperver, what are you about?”
“Don’t be alarmed; it is only to frighten her.”
“Very well, then, but no blood. Remember what I told you—the ball which strikes the Pest slays the count!”
“Don’t trouble yourself,” was the answer.
He went away without further parley. I could hear the splash of his feet in the water; then I saw his tall figure emerge at the opening of the dark glen, black against a purple background. He stood five minutes motionless. Attentive, bending forward, I looked and listened, still moving onward. As he returned I was but a few yards from him.
“Hark!” he whispered mysteriously. “Look there!”
At the end of the hollow, scooped out perpendicularly like a quarry in the mountain side, I saw a bright fire unrolling its golden spires beneath the vault of a cave, and before the fire sat a man with his hands clasped about his knees, whom I recognised by his dress as the Baron de Zimmer-Bluderich.
He sat motionless, his forehead resting between his hands. Behind him lay a dark gaunt form extended on the ground. Farther on, his horse, half lost in the shade, reared his neck, gazed on us with eyes fixed, ears erect, and nostrils distended.
I stood rooted to the ground.
How did the Baron de Zimmer happen to be in that lonely wilderness at such a time? What did he want here? Had he lost his way?
The most contradictory conjectures were passing in confusion through my excited brain, and I could not tell what conclusion to arrive at, when the baron’s horse began to neigh, and the master raised his head.
“Well, Donner, what is the matter now?” said he.
Then he, too, directed his gaze our way, straining his eyes through the darkness.
That pale face, with its strongly-marked features, thin lips, and thick black eyebrows meeting together, and forming a deep hollow on the brow in the form of a long vertical wrinkle, would have struck me with admiration at any other time; while now an inexplicable anxiety laid hold of me, and I was filled with vague apprehensions.
Suddenly the young man exclaimed—
“Who goes there?”
“I, monseigneur,” answered Sperver, coming forward—“Sperver, chief huntsman to the lord of Nideck.”
A flash shot from the baron’s quick eye; not a muscle of his countenance quailed. He rose to his feet, gathering his pelisse over his shoulders. I drew towards me the horses and the dog, and this animal suddenly began howling fearfully.
Is not every one, more or less, subject to superstitious fears? At these dismal sounds I trembled, and a cold shudder crept through my whole body.
Sperver and the baron stood at a distance of fifty yards from each other; the first immovable in the midst of the deep glen, his gun unslung from his shoulder, the other erect upon the level platform outside of the cave, carrying his head high, fixing on us a haughty eye and a proud look of superiority.
“What do you want here?” he asked aggressively.
“We are looking for a woman,” replied the old poacher—“a woman who comes every year prowling about Nideck, and our orders are to take her.”
“Has she stolen anything?”
“No.”
“Has she committed murder?”
“No, monseigneur.”
“Then what do you want with her? What right have you to pursue her?”
“And you—what right have you over her?” answered Sperver with an ironical smile. “See, there she is. I can see her at the bottom of the cave. What right have you to meddle with our affairs? Don’t you know that we are here in the domains of Nideck, and that we administer justice and execute our own decrees?”
The young man changed colour, and said coldly—
“I have no account to render to you.”
“Beware,” replied Sperver. “I am come with proposals of peace and conciliation. I am here on behalf of the lord Yeri-Hans. I am in the execution of my duty, and you are putting yourself in the wrong.”
“Your duty!” cried the young man bitterly. “If you talk about your duty you will oblige me to do mine!”
“Well, do it!” cried the huntsman, whose features were becoming disturbed with anger.
“No,” replied the baron, “I am not responsible to you, and you shall not come here!”
“That’s what we shall soon see!” said Sperver, drawing nearer to the cave.
The young man drew his hunting-knife. Perceiving this menacing action, I was about to dart between them, but happily the hound which I was holding by his collar slipped from me with a violent shock and threw me on the ground. I thought the baron would be lost, but at that instant a wild shriek rose from the dark bottom of the cavern, and as I rose to my feet I saw the old woman standing erect before the fire, her tattered garments hanging loosely about her, her grey and tangled locks floating wildly in the wind; she flung her bony arms in the air and uttered prolonged piercing howls like the cry of agony of the hungry wolf in the long cold nights of winter when famine is gnawing his entrails.
Never in my life have I seen a more fearful apparition. Sperver, motionless, his eyes riveted on the fearful object before him, and his mouth open with astonishment, stood as if rooted to the earth. But the powerful dog, surprised himself at this unexpected sight, stood still for a moment; then with a bend of his bristling back in preparation for a mighty leap, he made a rush with a deep, impatient growl which made me tremble. The platform before the cave was about eight or nine feet from the level where we stood, or he would have reached it at a single bound. I can yet hear him clearing a way through the snowy brambles, the baron flinging himself before the woman with a piercing cry, “My mother!” then the dog taking another spring, and Sperver, quick as lightning, raising his gun, and bringing down the poor animal dead at the young man’s feet.
This was but the work of a second. The gulf had been illuminated with a momentary flash, and the wild echoes were vibrating with the explosion from rock to rock, till it died in the far distance. Then silence again settled on the gloomy scene, as darkness after the lightning.
When the smoke of the explosion had cleared
