A great rotten trunk, all green with mould and blotched with pink and purple fungi, lay to one side of where they stood. Behind this the Frenchman crouched, and his three companions followed his example, peering through the brushwood screen in front of them. Still the one broad sheet of sunshine poured down between the two pines, but all else was as dim and as silent as a vast cathedral with pillars of wood and roof of leaf. Not a branch that creaked, nor a twig that snapped, nor any sound at all save the sharp barking of a fox somewhere in the heart of the forest. A thrill of excitement ran through the nerves of De Catinat. It was like one of those games of hide-and-seek which the court used to play, when Louis was in a sportive mood, among the oaks and yew hedges of Versailles. But the forfeit there was a carved fan, or a box of bonbons, and here it was death.
Ten minutes passed and there was no sign of any living thing behind them.
"They are over in yonder thicket," whispered Du Lhut, nodding his head towards a dense clump of brushwood, two hundred paces away.
"Have you seen them?"
"No."
"How do you know, then?"
"I saw a squirrel come from his hole in the great white beech-tree yonder. He scuttled back again as if something had scared him. From his hole he can see down into that brushwood."
"Do you think that they know that we are here?"
"They cannot see us. But they are suspicious. They fear a trap."
"Shall we rush for the brushwood?"