plan,
followed in the same road without a moment's hesitation. Plates and
dishes, glasses and bottles, saucepans and kettles were all heard making
a fearful clatter, while Mother Gredel rent the air with her piercing
cries of "Help, help!"

This was the best joke of the day. Roars of laughter hailed the
propitious escape of the dogs, even at the cost of so much good crockery.
They laughed till the tears came into their eyes, and rolled down their
red faces, and they panted for breath.

In a quarter of an hour there came a lull; then people began to think it
was time for the terrible bear from Asturias to make his appearance.

"The Asturian bear! the Spanish bear!" was the cry.

The bear-leader made signs to the people to be quiet, as he had something
to say to them. It was impossible! The cries and the uproar redoubled.

"The bear of Asturias! the bear of Asturias!"

Then the fellow muttered a few unintelligible words, unfastened the brown
bear, and took it back into its den; then with every appearance of
precaution he loosened the door of the pigsty and took the end of a chain
which was lying on the ground. A formidable growling was heard inside.
The man quickly passed the chain through a ring in the wall and fled,
crying--

"Now, you there, let the dogs go!"

Immediately a black bear, low, and almost stunted in its stature, with a
low forehead, ears wide apart, eyes red as fire, and glowing with a
fierce sullen passion, hurled himself out into the open, and finding the
chain fast in the wall, howled furiously. Evidently this was a bear of
the most deplorably low moral character! Moreover, he had been roused to
madness by the noise of the preceding combats, and his master had good
reason for not trusting himself much to him.

"Let go the dogs!" cried the bear-leader, putting his head out of the
granary skylight; "let them loose!"

Then he added--

"If you are not satisfied this time it won't be my fault. There will be a
battle now!"

At that moment Ludwig Karl's big mastiff and Fischer de Heischland's pair
of wolf-hounds, with tails low, hair straight and smooth, heads advanced
and ears erect, came into the court together.

The heavy-headed mastiff calmly yawned as he stretched his sinewy legs
and caved in his long back. But after a long and leisurely yawn he slowly
turned round, and catching sight of the bear he stood immovable as if
stupefied. The bear, too, fixed his vicious glowing eyes upon him wit