he casements.

Lieverle, with his head low down, seemed to want to see through the
granite, and his lips drawn back from his teeth discovered them to the
very gums, displaying two close rows of fangs white as ivory. Still he
growled. For a moment he would stop abruptly with his nose snuffing close
to the wall, next the floor, with strong respirations; then he would rise
again in a fresh rage, and with his forepaws seemed as if he would break
through the granite.

We watched in silence without being able to understand what caused his
excitement.

Another yell of rage more terrible than the first made us spring from our
seats.

"Lieverle! what possesses you? Are you going mad?"

He seized a log and began to sound the wall, which only returned the
dead, hard sound of a wall of solid rock. There was no hollow in it; yet
the dog stood in the posture of attack.

"Decidedly you must have been dreaming bad dreams," said the huntsman.
"Come, lie down, and don't worry us any more with your nonsense."

At that moment a noise outside reached our ears. The door opened, and the
fat honest countenance of Tobias Offenloch with his lantern in one hand
and his stick in the other, his three-cornered hat on his head, appeared,
smiling and jovial, in the opening.

"_Salut! l'honorable compagnie!_" he cried as he entered; "what are you
doing here?"

"It was that rascal Lieverle who made all that row. Just fancy--he set
himself up against that wall as if he smelt a thief. What could he mean?"

"Why _parbleu_! he heard the dot, dot of my wooden leg, to be sure,
stumping up the tower-stairs," answered the jolly fellow, laughing.

Then setting his lantern on the table--

"That will teach you, friend Gideon, to tie up your dogs. You are
foolishly weak over your dogs--very foolishly. Those beasts of yours
won't be satisfied till they have put us all out of doors. Just this
minute I met Blitzen in the long gallery: he sprang at my leg--see there
are the marks of his teeth in proof of what I say; and it is quite a new
leg--a brute of a hound!"

"Tie up my dogs! That's rather a new idea," said the huntsman. "Dogs tied
up are good for nothing at all; they grow too wild. Besides, was not
Lieverle tied up, after all? See his broken cord."

"What I tell you is not on my own account. When they come near me I
always hold up my stick and put my wooden leg foremost--that is my
discipline. I say, dogs in their kennels, cats on the roof, and t