Uncle Gregorio spoke these last words in a tone so full of mystery that the lasses opened wide their frightened eyes to look at him, and with blended curiosity and mischief, again pressed their questions:
“The night! But what goes on in that place by night that you should scare us so and throw out such dark and dreadful hints of what might befall? Do you think the wolves will eat us?”
“When the Moncayo is covered with snow, the wolves, driven from their dens, come down in packs and range over its slope; more than once we have heard them howling in horrible concert, not only in the neighborhood of the fountain, but in the very streets of the village; yet the wolves are not the most terrible tenants of the Moncayo; in its deep and dark caverns, on its wild and lonely summits, in its hollow heart there live certain diabolical spirits that, during the night, pour down its cascades in swarms and people the empty spaces, thronging like ants upon the plain, leaping from rock to rock, sporting in the waters and swinging on the bare boughs of the trees. It is these spirits that cry from the clefts of the crags, that roll up and push along those immense snowballs which come rolling down from the lofty peaks and sweep away and crush whatever they find in their path,--theirs are the voices calling in the hail at our windows on stormy nights,--theirs the forms that flit like thin, blue flames over the marshes. Among these spirits--who, driven from the lowlands by the sacred services and exorcisms of the Church, have taken refuge on the inaccessible crests of the mountains,--are those of diverse natures, that on appearing to our eyes clothe themselves in