“Have you ever seen him?” I continued.
“Never! Never in my life!”
The answer came quick and sudden. The scrivener sprang from the ground and looked circumspectly about. He put his hand to his ear as though he was listening to a sound and stood in utter silence for several minutes. At length he dropped his arm to his side and walked away.
“I thought it was some one moving about in the woods,” he said. “It was only a deer or boar rustling the leaves.”
If I hadn’t been so tired I would have laughed in his face. I was enough at home in the woods to know that there had been no sound, not even of the tiniest bird. The truth of the matter was that I had put a question to him that he was loath to answer. He had been evasive before when I tried to pry him open and now he had made this pretext to avoid me once again. I let the matter drop, but the determination lingered that at the first opportunity I would corner him and drive my questioning further.
He wandered off to pick up some sticks and shreds of moss and dried grass. When he had his arm full, he returned and spread what he had gathered upon the ground. He took off his coat and laid it like a pillow under his head. Then, without a word or even a look at me, he lay down and curled himself into a knot. It was not long before he was breathing deeply and snoring like the croaking of a frog.
I was weary with the day’s excitement. Perhaps the example of the scrivener set me to yawning. However it was, I was soon stretched out beside him asleep under the waving branches of the trees and the stars.
It was bright day when I awoke. The scrivener was about whistling with the merriment of a lark. He had a fire going in a crevice between two craggy rocks and on it was the remains of the meat which he had brought from the inn the night before. I fell to with a good appetite. When I arose to brush the crumbs from my clothes, he took to walking about with his hands behind him, lost in study with his brow wrinkled, frowning and talking to himself, as though he was trying to solve a riddle. Then suddenly he halted before me.
“We’ve got to get away from here,” he said. “It’s a wasps’ nest. They’re searching the woods. If we stay, we’ll be shot down like dogs.”
I looked at him.