"Is it not true," continued the governor, "that you do not understand how my guest, who has never been in this forest, knows it so well. How he knows that the enclosure of the Hermit's Chapel is the best haunt of the stag, and that relays must be placed at the border of the Priory Plain?"
"'Tis true," said Erhard in a low voice; "could not have known it so long—"
"And devil take me if I understand it myself, Marquis," said the baron.
Shrugging his shoulders and smiling, the Marquis drew from his pocket a little book bound in leather, and advanced towards Erhard: "Look here, you old wild boar, here's my conjuring-book."
The huntsman recoiled from it with a look of fright.
The Marquis opened the book, and spread out on his saddle-bow a forest map especially prepared for imperial hunting, and on which all the enclosures, routes, paths, haunts and passes of the animals were minutely indicated and explained.
"The map of the imperial hunting-ground!" cried the baron; "I ought to have guessed it. There is the mystery all explained. But you must have great insight, a rare familiarity with the chase, to be able to make such use of it. Ah, Marquis, Marquis, you have not your equal in Europe. To start a stag the first time that one hunts in a forest,—that is the most skilful thing I ever saw I Do you understand now, you old fool?" said the baron to the huntsman; "you ought to go down on your knees to the Marquis, our master in everything."
"Yes, yes, my lord, I understand, and God be praised, for it would have been a great misfortune;" saying these words, Erhard took his ramrod and drew his charge.
"What are you doing, Erhard?" said the baron.
The huntsman showed the baron a black ball, on which was traced a cross, and said to him: "At the first enclosure I should nevertheless have sent this charmed ball into the breast of the Marquis, whom I took for the devil; old Ralph said there was nothing like it to lay such evil spirits."