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 the people in the castle.”

Tobias sat down after thus delivering himself of his sentiments, and with both elbows on the table, his eyes expanding with delight, he confided to us that just now he was a bachelor.

“You don’t mean that!”

“Yes, Marie Anne is sitting up with Gertrude in monseigneur’s ante-room.”

“Then you are in no hurry to go away?”

“No, none at all.  I should like to stay in your company.”

“How unfortunate that you should have come in so late!” remarked Sperver; “all the bottles are empty.”

The disappointment of the discomfited major-domo excited my compassion.  The poor man would so gladly have enjoyed his widowhood.  But in spite of my endeavours to repress it a long yawn extended wide my mouth.

“Well, another time,” said he, rising.  “What is only put off is not given up.”