"Le Bour," returned the Baron grimly as the breech of his gun snapped shut.
The vast cultivated plain undulating below us looked like the patchwork-quilt of a giantess, stitched together with well-knit hedges. There were rectangles of apple-green clover, canary-yellow squares of mustard, green pastures of ochre stubble, rich green strips of beets, and rolling areas of brown-ribbed furrows freshly plowed.
Time after time we were obliged to pass around companies of partridges that had taken refuge under the idiotic lease of the aged aunt. It was exasperating, for, from the beginning of the shoot, every bird seemed to know where it was safe from the gleaming guns held so skilfully by the messieurs in the yellow dogskin gloves. By eleven o'clock there were barely a score of birds in the game-bags when there should have been a hundred.
At the second cross road, the right and left party convened. It was what Le Bour had been waiting for.
A sour old man in a blue blouse now rose up out of a hedge in which he had hidden himself, and came glowering toward us. As he drew nearer I saw that his gun swung loosely in his hand and was at full cock, its muzzle wavering unpleasantly over us as he strode on. His mean old eyes glittered with rage, his jaw trembled under a string of oaths. His manner was that of a sullen bull about to charge.
There was no mistaking his identity—it was Le Bour.
"Procès-verbal for all of you," he bellowed; "you, Monsieur le Baron, and you, Monsieur le Vicomte," he snapped, as the Baron advanced to defend his guests. "I saw you cross my buckwheat," he declared pointing an ugly finger at the Vicomte.
"You lie!" shouted the Baron, before the Vicomte could find his words. "I forbid you to open your head to my guests. Not one of these gentlemen has set foot in your harvest. What right have you to carry a gun? Where is your hunting permit?" thundered the Baron. "Where's your commission as guard, that you should have the insolence to threaten us with a procès-verbal."
"Ah!" exclaimed the Baron, as the permit was not forthcoming, "I thought as much. I appoint you witness, Monsieur le Curé, the fellow has no permit." And we swelled the merriment with a forced sputter of ridicule.