branches over the pebbles, and long flights of crows were skimming with their black wings the shimmering fields of buckwheat. In a quarter of an hour it would be clear daylight; the wakened birds announced it to all nature. The barkings which had been heard, which had stopped the three fishermen engaged in moving the boat, and had brought Aramis and Porthos out of the cavern, now seemed to come from a deep gorge within about a league of the grotto.

“It is a pack of hounds,” said Porthos; “the dogs are on a scent.”

“Who can be hunting at such a moment as this?” said Aramis.

“And this way, particularly,” continued Porthos, “where they might expect the army of the royalists.”