Evidently this was a bear of
the most deplorably low moral character! Moreover, he had been roused to
madness by the noise of the preceding combats, and his master had good
reason for not trusting himself much to him.
"Let go the dogs!" cried the bear-leader, putting his head out of the
granary skylight; "let them loose!"
Then he added--
"If you are not satisfied this time it won't be my fault. There will be a
battle now!"
At that moment Ludwig Karl's big mastiff and Fischer de Heischland's pair
of wolf-hounds, with tails low, hair straight and smooth, heads advanced
and ears erect, came into the court together.
The heavy-headed mastiff calmly yawned as he stretched his sinewy legs
and caved in his long back. But after a long and leisurely yawn he slowly
turned round, and catching sight of the bear he stood immovable as if
stupefied. The bear, too, fixed his vicious glowing eyes upon him with
ears expanded and his huge claws indenting the ground under them.
The wolf-hounds drew up as reserves in the rear of the mastiff.
Then such silence fell upon all that excited multitude that a dead leaf
might have been heard rustling to the ground; but there followed a deep,
low, fierce growl, like a coming thunderstorm, which sent a shudder
through the crowd.
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