to ask to be shown to my bed, when suddenly the old forester leaped to his feet, rushed for his gun and shouted wildly: ‘There he is now! I can hear him!’ The women fell on their knees and hid their faces and the two sons clutched their axes.
“I was going to try to quiet them once more, when, all at once, the sleeping dog awoke. He lifted his head, looked at the fire with his dim eyes and let out one of those mournful howls that so often startle travellers in the country at night.
“We all watched him. He arose and stood perfectly still on his four paws, as if haunted by some vision, and then he directed another howl at something invisible to us, unknown, but which must have been ghastly to look upon, for he bristled from end to end.
“The old man, turning as white as a sheet, yelled: ‘He smells him! he smells him! He was with me when I killed him!’ And both women, crazed with fear, began to moan in accompaniment to the dog.
“In spite of myself, a shudder ran down my spine. The vision that the animal saw at that time and place, and among those terrified people, was horrible beyond description.
“For one whole hour the dog howled without moving; he howled as if in the throes of a nightmare, and fear, horrible, stealthy fear, was slowly taking possession of me; fear of what? How can I tell? It was fear, and that’s all I know.
“We remained motionless and terror-stricken, with strained ears, throbbing hearts and trembling limbs, momentarily expecting some dreadful thing to happen. The dog began to wander about the room sniffing the walls. He was driving us mad! All of a sudden, the peasant who acted as my guide jumped up in a sort of paroxysm of frenzied terror, seized the animal by the throat, opened a little door leading into the yard and hurled it into the darkness outside.
“The dog stopped howling at once and we remained in a dead silence that was more terrifying than the noise.
“Suddenly we all gave a start; some creature was creeping along the outer wall, going in the direction of the woods; it passed the door and seemed to feel it with a hesitating hand; for two minutes, which almost made lunatics of us, we heard no sound; then the creeping creature returned and scratched slightly on the door as a child might do with its nail, and then, all of a sudden, a head appeared at the window. It was a white head and it had flaming eyes like a wild beast. And a murmur came from its lips, an indistinct sound that resembled a plaintive moan.
“A minute afterwards a terrific explosion shook the kitchen. The old forester had shot at the thing. Quick as a flash the two sons rushed to the window and barricaded it with a massive kitchen table and sideboard.
“And I swear to you that that shot, which was so absolutely unexpected, froze my blood in my veins and made me feel as if I were going to give up the ghost.
“We stayed in the kitchen until daybreak, for we were powerless to move or utter a sound, so completely unnerved were we.
“We did not dare open the door till a narrow ray of light pierced through the shutters.
“At the foot of the wall, near the door, lay the old dog, his jaw broken by a bullet.
“He had got out of the yard by digging a hole under the fence.”
The man with the sunburned face paused; then he added:
“That night I ran no danger whatever, but I would rather live over all the real perils I have faced than go through another minute like the one I passed when the old keeper shot at the bearded head peering through the cottage window.”
In the Country
The two cottages stood side by side at the foot of a hill near a little seaside resort. The two peasants laboured hard on the fertile soil to rear their little ones, of whom each family had four.
Before the adjoining doors a whole troop of brats swarmed from morning till night. The two eldest were six years old, and the youngest were about fifteen months; the marriages, and afterwards the births, having taken place nearly simultaneously in both families.
The two mothers could hardly distinguish their own offspring among the lot, and as for the fathers, they mixed them up completely. The eight names danced in their heads; they were always getting them mixed up; and when they wished to call one child, the men often called three names before getting the right one.
The first of the two cottages, as you came up from the watering-place, Rolleport, was occupied by the Tuvaches, who had three girls and one boy; the other house sheltered the Vallins, who had one girl and three boys.
They all subsisted frugally on soup, potatoes and fresh air. At seven o’clock in the morning, then at noon, then at six o’clock in the evening, the housewives got their broods together to give them their food, as the gooseherds collect their flocks. The children were seated, according to age, before the wooden table, polished by fifty years of use; the mouths of the youngest hardly reaching the level of the table. Before them was placed a bowl filled with bread, soaked in the water in which the potatoes had been boiled, half a cabbage and three onions; and the whole line ate until their hunger was appeased. The mother herself fed the smallest.
A little meat in the pot on Sundays was a feast for all; and the father on this day sat longer over the meal, repeating: “I wish we could have this every day.”
One afternoon, in the month of August, a phaeton unexpectedly stopped in front of the cottages, and a young woman, who was driving the horses, said to the gentleman sitting at her side:
“Oh, look at
