"Good! Three o'clock. Stop here, youngster, and in an hour I shall send you a buck."
"A buck at four o'clock? How are you to tell that?" And I felt that I opened my eyes as an oyster does his bivalve domicile at high water. "A buck! you are joking."
"I never joke," said the Père Séguin with a hoarse grunt, walking away, and his face did not belie his words.
"Well, then, but how can you possibly—Stop, do, for one moment. Hear me! holla! Père Séguin! I say, you old humbug.—By Socrates, he is off."
But Père Séguin was already striding fast and far through the bending branches, wilfully, if not really out of hearing, and I had nothing to do but to watch for the promised game. I had no watch, and it seemed to me long after the appointed hour, when my reverie was disturbed by a low voice, from I knew not where,—from heaven, from earth, from a murmuring brook, from a tree,—which dropped these words in my ear.
"Silence—four o'clock—the buck."
At that moment I saw the ears of the roebuck, and soon after the animal itself, pausing for a moment in his leisurely course, just where he ought to be for a good shot. But amazement and trepidation seized me. I fired in a hurry, and the deer bounded off unscathed. "How clumsy," said I to the Père Séguin, as he emerged from the thicket, "and how unfortunate, for I have some friends coming to dine with me this week."
"Never mind, never mind," replied the poacher; "I will fill your larder to-morrow."
"Well, you are a good fellow, but remember I require also some fish—a fine dish of trout."