.

"It will last about ten minutes," said Aramis. "To work!"

And with a resolute air he took up a musket, and placed his
hunting-knife between his teeth.

"Yves, Goenne, and his son," continued Aramis, "will pass the muskets to
us. You, Porthos, will fire when they are close. We shall have brought
down eight before the others are aware of anything--that is certain;
then all, there are five of us, we will dispatch the other eight, knife
in hand."

"And poor Biscarrat?" said Porthos.

Aramis reflected a moment. "Biscarrat the first," replied he, coolly;
"he knows us."

CHAPTER CXXII.

THE GROTTO.

In spite of the sort of divination which was the remarkable side of the
character of Aramis, the event, subject to the chances of things over
which uncertainty presides, did not fall out exactly as the bishop of
Vannes had foreseen. Biscarrat, better mounted than his companions,
arrived the first at the opening of the grotto, and comprehended that
the fox and the dogs were all engulfed in it. Only struck by that
superstitious terror which every dark and subterraneous way naturally
impresses upon the mind of man, he stopped at the outside of the grotto,
and waited till his companions should have assembled round him.

"Well!" asked the young men, coming up out of breath, and unable to
understand the meaning of his inaction.

"Well! I cannot hear the dogs; they and the fox must be all engulfed in
this cavern."

"They were too close up," said one of the guards, "to have lost scent
all at once. Besides, we should hear them from one side or another. They
must, as Biscarrat says, be in this grotto."

"But then," said one of the young men, "why don't they give tongue?"

"It is strange!" said another.

"Well, but," said a fourth, "let us go into this grotto. Does it happen
to be forbidden that we should enter it?"

"No," replied Biscarrat. "Only as it looks as dark as a wolf's mouth,
we might break our necks in it."

"Witness the dogs," said a guard, "who seem to have broken theirs."

"What the devil can have become of them?" asked the young men in chorus.
And every master called his dog by his name, whistled to him in his
favorite note, without a single one replying to either the call or the
whistle.

"It is perhaps an enchanted grotto," said Biscarrat; "let us see." And
jumping from his horse, he made a step into the grotto.

"Stop! stop! I will accompany you," said one of the guards, on seeing
Biscar