With bloodshot eyes, threatening and ferocious countenance,
he advanced towards the small room, as if to drive back Morok, and
exclaimed, in a voice of thunder:

"Where are the Devourers?--the Wolves will eat 'em up!"

The host hastened to open the door of the small room, saying: "There is
no one here, my friends--no one. Look for yourselves."

"It is true," said the quarryman, surprised, after peeping into the
room; "where are they, then? We were told there were a dozen of them
here. They should have marched with us against the factory, or there'd
'a been a battle, and the Wolves would have tried their teeth!"

"If they have not come," said another, "they will come. Let's wait."

"Yes, yes; we will wait for them."

"We will look close at each other."

"If the Wolves want to see the Devourers," said Morok, "why not go and
howl round the factory of the miscreant atheists? At the first howl of
the Wolves they will come out, and give you battle."

"They will give you--battle," repeated Sleepinbuff, mechanically.

"Unless the Wolves are afraid of the Devourers," added Morok.

"Since you talk of fear, you shall go with us, and see who's afraid!"
cried the formidable blaster, and in a thundering voice, he advanced
towards Morok.

A number of voices joined in with, "Who says the Wolves are afraid of
the Devourers?"

"It would be the first time!"

"Battle! battle! and make an end of it!"

"We are tired of all this. Why should we be so miserable, and they so
well off?"

"They have said that quarrymen are brutes, only fit to torn wheels in a
shaft, like dogs to turn spits," cried an emissary of Baron Tripeaud's.

"And that the Devourers would make themselves caps with wolf-skin,"
added another.

"Neither they nor their wives ever go to mass. They are pagans and
dogs!" cried an emissary of the preaching abbe.

"The men might keep their Sunday as they pleased; but their wives not to
go to mass!--it is abominable.

"And, therefore, the curate has said that their factory, because of its
abominations, might bring down the cholera to the country."

"True? he said that in his sermon."

"Our wives heard it."

"Yes, yes; down with the Devourers, who want to bring the cholera on the
country!"

"Hooray, for a fight!" cried the crowd in chorus.

"To the factory, my brave Wolves!" cried Morok, with the voice of a
Stentor; "on to the factory!"

"Yes! to the factory! to the factory!" repeated the crowd, with fur