"We are watched; a man is following us through the wood. Do not be disturbed if you see me disappear. Wait for me at the place where you lose sight of me."
The traveller answered by a simple motion of the head, which meant, "Very good; as you say."
They walked on fifty steps farther. Suddenly Jean Oullier darted into the wood. Thirty or forty feet in the depths of it a sound was heard like that of a deer rising in affright. The noise went off in the distance, as though it were indeed a deer that had made it. Jean Oullier's steps were heard in the same direction. Then all sounds died away.
The traveller leaned against an oak and waited. At the end of twenty minutes a voice said beside him:--
"Now, we'll go on."
He quivered. The voice was really that of Jean Oullier, but the old huntsman had come back so gently that not a single sound betrayed his return.
"Well?" said the traveller.
"Lost time!" exclaimed Jean Oullier.
"No one there?"
"Some one; but the villain knows the wood as well as I do."