Another example, little known in thickly populated countries, is drawn from a curious scene which I witnessed during a winter passed in Perigord Noir.  We had remarked that for several nights the three watch dogs, a young and an old male and a bitch, howled often toward midnight, but in a peculiar way.  One night in particular, during their tedious concert, just as we had got to sleep, they mingled with their cries howlings like those they would have uttered if they had been beaten, with a shading hard to define, but which we perceived plainly; and we remarked that, leaving their kennel in the avenue that led up to the lodge, they had come to close quarters with one another at the gate, with alternating howlings and plaintive cries.  Inquiring in the morning for the cause of these singular cries, the peasants told me that a wolf had passed, and predicted that it would return.  They said, too, that a neighbor’s hunting bitch had disappeared, and its bones had been found in the fields near a wood.  We were awakened again about midnight by the cries of the dogs, and the scene was renewed.  Informed as we now were of the nature of what was going on, we ran to one of the windows, whence we could see, in the clear light of the moon, all that passed.  The three dogs were cowering against the gate, the oldest one howling by the side of the others, while the younger one and the bitch were exposed at intervals to the attacks of another animal, browner than they, and of about their size, without defending themselves, but moaning as if they were undergoing a vigorous correction.

Frightened, doubtless, by the opening of the blinds of the first story above him, the strange animal had gone away and was sitting in the middle of the road.  We could only see that he had straight ears.  While we were going down to get a gun the visitor came back to his charge on the dogs, which had begun howling after he left them, and resumed the cries significant of chastisement when they were attacked again.  For some reason, perhaps because he heard the click of the gun, the foe drew back and sat down in a garden walk, concealed by a bunch of shrubbery.  The three dogs, notwithstanding our reiterated urging, were no more disposed to pursue him than before.  If the assailant had been a dog they would have rushed upon him, but they stayed cowering at the gate and howled distressfully.  The bitch was most affected, and they all seemed paralyzed by fear.  It is said in the country that bitches are especially liable to be attacked by wolves.  It was so here.  The most certain feature in the matter was the terror of the animals.  They were capable of resisting the attack three times over.  The young dog was a savage one, and passers-by were afraid of the bitch; but that night they were terrorized, and all incapable of defending themselves.  Their cries were therefore due to the same cause as in the preceding night—­the presence and attacks of the wolf.  I could not have realized their meaning if I had not been a witness of the scene—­that is, I could not have correlated the cries and the acts.