Some distance away a starved-looking dog was standing with its back towards me. It was a huge animal, and it had laid its front paws on the closed shutters of my former bedroom, and every now and then uttered a loud long wail. The other barkings--the stifled ones--replied to him from the inside of the house; but were they really yelps? Had my ears deceived me? It sounded more like the voice of a man trying to imitate the voice of a dog. The more I listened, the more that conclusion forced itself on me. Yes, certainly there could be no mistake; how could I have hesitated? It was quite clear--some practical joker in my bedroom was amusing himself with teasing the poor brute. And he succeeded in doing so; for the animal gave signs of increasing exasperation. He modulated his howling in the most extraordinary manner, making it sound like a cry of despair. Finally he scratched the shutters with rage and bit them. I heard the crackling of the wood between his jaws. Suddenly the beast became motionless, its hair bristling. There was a brusque and violent outburst in that room. I recognized my uncle’s voice but could not catch the meaning of his reprimand. Immediately the joker was silent. But--and how to account for this amazing circumstance?--the dog whose frenzy should have been appeased, was now beside itself; its backbone bristled up like that of a wild boar. Growling, it began to follow the wall of the _château_, till it reached the main door. Just as it reached it, Lerne opened it. Fortunately for me I had, in caution, not raised my window curtain. His first look was towards my window. In a low voice, with restrained wrath, the Professor lectured the dog, but he did not come forward, and I perceived he was afraid of it. The other came nearer, growling, with its eyes flashing from under its great brow. Lerne then spoke aloud: “To your kennel, you dirty brute!” (Then came some words in a foreign tongue.) “Get away,” he went on in French; and as the animal still came on--“Do you want me to knock your brains out? Eh?” My uncle seemed to be losing his wits. The moon heightened his pallor. “He’ll be torn to bits,” I said to myself, “he has not even a riding-switch.” “Go back, Nell, go back.” Nell? So it was the St. Bernard bitch belonging to the Scot. And then came a stream of foreign words which to my complete astonishment made me realize that my uncle knew English. His invectives resounded in the silence of the night. The dog gathered itself together; it was just going to spring when Lerne, at the end of his resources, threatened it with a revolver and with the other hand pointed out the way he wanted the beast to go.