making for your happiness! But your friend Christian never
draws back. Azazel must perish!"

A little farther on the ledge narrowed and ended in a point.

The goat, having a second time examined me with a curious eye, drew back
a little farther, but not without some hesitation.

"Aha!" I exclaimed, "you are beginning to understand what is going to
happen. Yes, let me get you into that corner, and your doom is sealed!"

And undoubtedly, when he had got to the spot where the ledge came to
an end, Azazel seemed puzzled to know what to do next. I edged up to
him closer and closer, full of a noble excitement, and laughing in
anticipation at the coming descent and the splash in the torrent below.

I now beheld him at four paces from me, and I was grasping tightly a root
of holly that was growing out of a rock to launch out a kick at the
devoted beast.

"Look, Elias, see the accursed!" I cried.

When, all in a moment, I felt in my stomach a most awful blow, a butt
which would have sent _me_ into the Holderloch had I not kept hold of
that blessed root of holly. The fact was that that miserable goat, seeing
himself driven into a corner, had himself commenced the attack.

Oh, what was my astonishment! Before I knew where I was or what had
happened, there was the brute standing up again on his hind-legs, and his
horns digging into my stomach and my sides with a hollow sound.

What a position to be in! It is impossible to be more astounded than I
was at that moment! It was the world upside down. It was a bad dream--a
nightmare! The precipice with all its jagged peaks seemed to dance around
me, and so did the trees and sky above. At the same moment I heard
piercing cries from Elias of "Help! help!" while Azazel's horns were
ploughing up my sides.

Then I lost all presence of mind. The goat with his long beard and his
hard, sharp horns pounding me, now in my chest, now in my stomach, and
then in my shaking limbs, produced a most diabolical effect upon me. My
hold on the root slowly relaxed, and I let go. But happily something kept
me from falling, something which I could not understand at first. But it
was the shepherd Yeri, of the Holderloch, who from the next platform
above had caught me by the coat-collar with his crook.

Thanks to his assistance, instead of falling down into the chasm I lay
full length along the ledge, and that awful goat walked over my body to
get away about his business.

"Come, take firm hold of