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.
We looked at the dog. The half-gnawed bone was still between his
forepaws, but with head raised high, ears cocked up, and flashing eye,
he was listening intently--listening to the silence as it were, and an
angry quivering ran down the length of his back.
Sperver and I fixed on each other anxious eyes; yet there was not a
sound, not a breath outside, for the wind had gone down; nothing could be
heard but the deep protracted growl which came from deep down the chest
of the noble hound.
Suddenly he sprang up and bounded impetuously against the wall with a
hoarse, rough bark of fearful loudness. The walls re-echoed just as if
a clap of thunder had rattled the casements.
Lieverle, with his head low down, seemed to want to see through the
granite, and his lips drawn back from his teeth discovered them to the
very gums, displaying two close rows of fangs white as ivory.
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