42 THRILLING ADVENTURES. 



tinder the walls of the chateau, with the pareur at their head ; 

 while by his side stood the mandrin, who proudly guarded a 

 dozen large mastiffs, held in leash by his vigorous helpers. 

 The young baron and his friends, armed with carbines and 

 hunting-knives, had scarcely appeared, when, by a sign from 

 the pareur, the whole troop moved silently forward. The 

 dogs themselves seemed to understand the importance of the 

 movement ; and nothing was heard but the confused tramp 

 of feet, blended with the noise of the distant torrent, or, at 

 intervals, the cry of some belated night-bird flying heavily 

 homeward in the doubtful glimmer of the yet unopened day. 



As the party reached the crest of the mountain which im- 

 mediately overhung the chateau, the first rays of the sun 

 breaking from the east glanced on the summit of the Pyre- 

 nees, and suddenly illuminating the landscape, discovered 

 beneath them a deep valley, covered with majestic pine-trees, 

 which murmured in the fresh breeze of the morning. 



Opposite to them, the foaming waters of a cascade fell for 

 some hundreds of feet through a cleft which divided the moun- 

 tains from the summit to the base. By one of those caprices 

 of nature which testify the primitive convulsions of our globe, 

 the chasm was surmounted by a natural bridge the piles 

 of granite at each side being jointed by one immense flat 

 rock, almost seeming to verify the fable of the Titans ; for it 

 appeared impossible that these enormous blocks of stone could 

 have ever been raised to such an elevation by human agency. 

 Sinister legends were attached to the place ; and the moun- 

 taineers recounted with terror that no hunters, with the ex- 

 ception of the pareur, had ever been posted at the bridge of 

 Maure without becoming the prey of either the bears or the 

 precipice. But the pareur was too good a Christian to par- 

 take of this ridiculous prejudice ; he attributed the fatality 

 to its real cause the dizziness arising from the sight of the 

 bears and the precipice combined, by destroying the hunter's 

 presence of mind, made his aim unsteady, and his death the 



