aught the noise of closing doors;
but here the hounds, as if suddenly becoming alive to some disturbance,
raised the same fearsome concert of yells and barks with which they had
greeted my arrival, and listening became useless.

"I had risen to my feet. My host, turning from the window, seized my
shoulder with a fierce grip, and bade me 'hold my noise'; for a second or
two I stood motionless under his iron talons, then he released me with an
exultant whisper: "Now for our chase!" and made for the door with a
spring. Hastily gulping down a mouthful of arrack from one of the bottles
on the table, I followed him, and, guided by the sound of his footsteps
before me, groped my way through passages as black as Erebus.

"After a time, which seemed a long one, a small door was flung open in
front, and I saw Kossowski glide into the moonlit courtyard and cross the
square. When I too came out he was disappearing into the gaping darkness
of the open stable door, and there I overtook him.

"A man who seemed to have been sleeping in a corner jumped up at our
entrance, and led out a horse ready saddled. In obedience to a gruff order
from his master, as the latter mounted, he then brought forward another
which he had evidently thought to ride himself and held the stirrup for
me.

"We came delicately forth, and the Cossack hurriedly barred the great door
behind us. I caught a glimpse of his worn, scarred face by the moonlight,
as he peeped after us for a second before shutting himself in; it was
stricken with terror.

"The baron trotted briskly toward the kennels, from whence there was now
issuing a truly infernal clangor, and, as my steed followed suit of his
own accord, I could see how he proceeded dexterously to unbolt the gates
without dismounting, while the beasts within dashed themselves against
them and tore the ground in their fury of impatience.

"He smiled, as he swung back the barriers at last, and his 'beauties' came
forth. Seven or eight monstrous brutes, hounds of a kind unknown to me:
fulvous and sleek of coat, tall on their legs, square-headed, long-tailed,
deep-chested; with terrible jaws slobbering in eagerness. They leaped
around and up at us, much to our horses' distaste. Kossowski, still
smiling, lashed at them unsparingly with his hunting whip, and they
responded, not with yells of pain, but with snarls of fury.

"Managing his restless steed and his cruel whip with consummate ease, my
host drove the unruly