was dripping at its end with the oozing sap, and darted volumes of light
grey smoke to the roof.

I was still contemplating the dog, when, suddenly recollecting our broken
conversation, I went on--

"Now, Sperver, you have not told me everything. When you left the mountain
for the castle was it not on account of the death of Gertrude, your good,
excellent wife?"

Gideon frowned, and a tear dimmed his eye; he drew himself up, and
shaking out the ashes of his pipe upon his thumbnail, he said--

"True, my wife is dead. That drove me from the woods. I could not look
upon the valley of Roche Creuse without pain. I turned my flight in this
direction: I hunt less in the woods, and I can see it all from higher up,
and if by chance the pack tails off in that direction I let them go. I
turn back and try to think of something else."

Sperver had grown taciturn. With his head drooped upon his breast, his
eyes fixed on the stone floor, he sat silent. I felt sorry to have awoke
these melancholy recollections in him. Then, my thoughts once more
returning to the Black Plague grovelling in the snow, I felt a shivering
of horror.

How strange! just one word had sent us into a train of unhappy thoughts.
A whole world of remembrances was called up by a chance.

I know not how long this silence lasted, when a growl, deep, long, and
terrible, like distant thunder, made us start.