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But this was of no use. At last the man succeeded in making him loose his hold by a tremendous cut with his whip across his body, and, dragging the animal away, they both disappeared under the archway.

The mongrels had not waited for this event to give up the battle; four or five only still hung upon Bruin’s side; the rest, scared, limping, yelping, were trying to find a way out. Suddenly one of those heroes, a cur belonging to Rasimus, caught sight of the kitchen window, and, fired by a noble enthusiasm for his safety, he crashed through glass and all. All the rest of the yelling crew, struck by the ingenuity of this plan, followed in the same road without a moment’s hesitation. Plates and dishes, glasses and bottles, saucepans and kettles were all heard making a fearful clatter, while Mother Gredel rent the air with her piercing cries of “Help, help!”

This was the best joke of the day. Roars of laughter hailed the propitious escape of the dogs, even at the cost of so much good crockery. They laughed till the tears came into their eyes, and rolled down their red faces, and they panted for breath.

In a quarter of an hour there came a lull; then people began to think it was time for the terrible bear from Asturias to make his appearance.

“The Asturian bear! the Spanish bear!” was the cry.

The bear-leader made signs to the people to be quiet, as he had something to say to them. It was impossible! The cries and the uproar redoubled.

“The bear of Asturias! the bear of Asturias!”

Then the fellow muttered a few unintelligible words, unfastened the brown bear, and took it back into its den; then with every appearance of precaution he loosened the door of the pigsty and took the end of a chain which was lying on the ground. A formidable growling was heard inside. The man quickly passed the chain through a ring in the wall and fled, crying–

“Now, you there, let the dogs go!”

Immediately a black bear, low, and almost stunted in its stature, with a low forehead, ears wide apart, eyes red as fire, and glowing with a fierce sullen passion, hurled himself out into the open, and finding the chain fast in the wall, howled furiously. 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.

Suddenly the mastiff sprang forward, the two others followed, and then for several seconds nothing was seen but a confused mass rolling round the chain, then blood and entrails mingled flowing over the stones, then the bear rising on his haunches hugging the mastiff between his terrible claws, swaying to and fro his heavy head, for a moment and gaping wide with his crimson jaws, for the muzzle was gone; in the struggle it had fallen off!