"He said that?" said the baron, stupefied.
"Just as I have told you, my lord, and he added: 'I have great hope of starting a full-grown buck, for, in the woods about the Hermit's Chapel, stags are plenty. You, Master Erhard, on your part, seek to start a wild boar. They are always to be found in the forests of Enrichs, the brambles are so thick. Then the baron can have his choice between the foot of the stag or the track of the wild boar.' 'But, sir,' I said, affrighted, 'you know our forests well, then? you have often hunted them?' 'I have never hunted here,' he answered, 'but I know it as well as you do. Go ahead! good luck, Master Erhard!'—and then he disappeared in the woods, taking with him poor Moick, our best boar-hound, whom lie will perhaps change into a lynx, or a beast with seven paws, by his diabolical witchcraft."
The baron was not at all superstitious, but he could not comprehend what Erhard said, and he knew him to be too respectful to joke with his master. Nevertheless, he could not but admit that the Marquis was endowed with such topographical knowledge as the huntsman described.
"And what have you done in the search?" he asked Erhard.
"He whom you call your guest has brought me ill-luck,—I have done nothing."
"Nothing? how does that happen? This is the first time in two years that you have not had game,—and on a day, too, when we are going to hunt with a stranger!"
"Where the evil spirit can, mere mortals can't, my lord," said Erhard, soberly. "He whom you call your guest has only to sound his trumpet, and all the animals of the forest will come to him, as the bird comes to the serpent."
"Go to the devil, you old fool!" cried the governor, angrily.
"I shall not have to go far for that, my lord," murmured he, in a low voice, pointing to Létorière, who was coming out of a coppice holding old Moick in leash.
"Long life to you, baron!" cried Létorière; "if you have a mind, you can chase a full-grown buck, and strike him at my trap near the chapel. By the size of his tracks, I would lay a wager that it is one of those great deer with a white forehead and legs; the King of France has a number like them in his forest of Chambord. I should recognize their feet among a thousand. They have a magnificent shape."