rs tore their ragged coats of bark.
Suddenly the beast and the horseman issued from the forest and rushed
into a valley, just as the moon appeared above the mountains. The valley
here was stony, inclosed by enormous rocks.

Francois then uttered a yell of joy which the echoes repeated like a peal
of thunder, and he leaped from his horse, his cutlass in his hand.

The beast, with bristling hair, the back arched, awaited him, its eyes
gleaming like two stars. But, before beginning battle, the strong hunter,
seizing his brother, seated him on a rock, and, placing stones under his
head, which was no more than a mass of blood, he shouted in the ears as
if he was talking to a deaf man: "Look, Jean; look at this!"

Then he attacked the monster. He felt himself strong enough to overturn a
mountain, to bruise stones in his hands. The beast tried to bite him,
aiming for his stomach; but he had seized the fierce animal by the neck,
without even using his weapon, and he strangled it gently, listening to
the cessation of breathing in its throat and the beatings of its heart.
He laughed, wild with joy, pressing closer and closer his formidable
embrace, crying in a delirium of joy, "Look, Jean, look!" All resistance
ceased; the body of the wolf became limp. He was dead.

Franqois took him up in his arms and carried him to the feet of the elder
brother, where he laid him, repeating, in a tender voice: "There, there,
there, my little Jean, see him!"

Then he replaced on the saddle the two bodies, one upon the other, and
rode away.

He returned to the chateau, laughing and crying, like Gargantua at the
birth of Pantagruel, uttering shouts of triumph, and boisterous with joy
as he related the death of the beast, and grieving and tearing his beard
in telling of that of his brother.

And often, later, when he talked again of that day, he would say, with
tears in his eyes: "If only poor Jean could have seen me strangle the
beast, he would have died content, that I am sure!"

The widow of my ancestor inspired her orphan son with that horror of the
chase which has transmitted itself from father to son as far down as
myself.

The Marquis d'Arville was silent. Some one asked:

"That story is a legend, isn't it?"

And the story teller answered:

"I swear to you that it is true from beginning to end."

Then a lady declared, in a little, soft voice

"All the same, it is fine to have passions like that."

THE INN

Resemblin