The volunteers, after so many fatigues, felt in need of repose, so every one hastened to rest his gun against the wall, and to stretch himself upon the ground. Marc Divès opened the door of the inner cavern for them, where they were at least under shelter; then he went out with Hullin to examine the position. CHAPTER XXV. On the rock of the Falkenstein, at its very highest point, rises a round tower hollowed out at its base. This tower, covered with brambles, white thorns, and myrtles, seems as old as the mountain itself. Neither French, Germans, nor Swedes have been able to destroy it. The stone and the cement are united so firmly, that not the least fragment can be detached. It has a gloomy and mysterious aspect, which carries you back to bygone times to which the memory of man cannot reach. At the period of the passage of the wild geese, Marc Divès used frequently to lie in ambush there when he had nothing better to do, and sometimes at the fall of day, just as the flocks were arriving through the mist, and describing a large circuit before retiring to rest, he would bring down two or three, to the great delight of Hexe-Baizel, who was always very eager to put them on the spit. Often, too, in the autumn, Marc would spread his nets among the bushes, into which the thrushes would drop without even a struggle; so that, in short, the old tower served him as a sort of storehouse. How many times had Hexe-Baizel, when the north wind blew hard enough to tear the horns from off the oxen, and the noise, the cracking of the branches, and the hoarse groaning of the surrounding forests ascended on high like the clamour of an angry sea--how many times had Hexe-Baizel been nearly carried away as far as the Kilbéri opposite? But she would cling to the bushes with both hands, and the wind but succeeded in shaking out her red locks. Divès, having noticed that his wood, from being often covered with snow and steeped with rain, gave out more smoke than flame, had sheltered the old tower with a roof made of planks. On this subject the smuggler had a singular story to relate: He asserted that he had discovered while fixing the rafters, at the bottom of a fissure, an owl as white as snow, blind, and feeble, provided in abundance with field-mice and bats. For this reason he had christened her the _Grandmother of the Land_, supposing that all the birds came and brought her food on account of her extreme old age and feebleness. At the close of this day, the mountaineers placed in observation, like the dwellers in a vast hotel, on all the ridges of the rock, saw the white uniforms appear in the neighbouring gorges. They were issuing in vast masses from all sides at once, which showed clearly their intention of blockading the Falkenstein. Marc Divès, seeing that, grew more thoughtful. "If they surround us," thought he, "we shall no longer be able to procure provisions; we shall have to surrender or perish with hunger."