"Beech-mast," replied Pitou. "It is this way. If Daddy Lajeunesse, the gamekeeper, saw me rambling without the bag he would want to know what I was lurking for and he would feel suspicion. But when he challenged me with the bag, I just answered him: 'I am gathering beechmast, father—it is not forbidden to gather mast, is it?' and not being forbidden, he could not do anything. So he said nothing except: 'You have a good aunt, Pitou; give her my compliments.'"
"So you have been collecting mast instead of catching rabbits," cried Aunt Angelique, angrily.
"No, no, I laid my snares under cover of mast-gathering: the old donkey saw me doing that and thought it right."
"But the game?" said the woman, bent on the first principle.
"The moon will be up at twelve and I will go and see how many I have snared."
"You will go into the woods at midnight?"
"Why, not? what is there to be afraid of?"
The woman was as amazed at Ange's courage as at the breadth of his speculations. But brought up in the woods, Ange was not to be scared at what terrifies the town boy.
So at midnight he set out, skirting the cemetery wall, for the innocent lad, never in his ideas offending anybody, had no more fear of the dead than of the living.
The only person he dreaded was Lajeunesse. So he made a turn round his house and stopped to imitate the barking of a dog so naturally that the gamekeeper's basset "Snorer," deceived by the provocation, replied with a full throat and came to the door to sniff the air.