“You can leave that to me,” replied the voice, “only do not lose any time, or the dogs will be here before you have reached the shed, and that would make matters unpleasant, not for me, whom they would not find, but for you, whom they would.”
Thibault did not wait to be warned a second time, but was off like a shot to the shed. He unfastened the buck, which, as if propelled by some hidden force, leapt from the house, ran round it, crossing the track of the wolf, and plunged into the Baisemont coppice. The dogs were within a hundred paces of the hut; Thibault heard them with trepidation; the whole pack came full force against the door, one hound after the other.
Then, all at once, two or three gave cry and went off in the direction of Baisemont, the rest of the hounds after them.
The dogs were on the wrong scent; they were on the scent of the buck, and had abandoned that of the wolf.
Thibault gave a deep sigh of relief; he watched the hunt gradually disappearing in the distance, and went back to his room to the full and joyous notes of the Baron’s horn.
He found the wolf lying composedly on the same spot as before, but how it had found its way in again was quite as impossible to discover as how it had found its way out.
CHAPTER V
THE PACT WITH SATAN
THIBAULT stopped short on the threshold, overcome with astonishment at this re-apparition. “I was saying,” began the wolf, as if nothing had happened to interrupt the conversation, “that it is out of my power to grant you the accomplishment of all the wishes you may have in future for your own comfort and advancement.”
“Then I am to expect nothing from you?”
“Not so, for the ill you wish your neighbour can be carried out with my help.”