He was about to stoop and emerge from the yew-boughs when he heard a sound which made him stop abruptly.
It was a step; of that he felt sure. And at hand, too. The next moment he was glad he had not disclosed himself, for a crouching figure stealthily followed Annaik.
Surely that was the same figure he had seen cross the glade, the figure that had slipped from the thorn?
If so, could it be the person who had cut the letter "J" on the bark of the tree? The man kept so much in the shadow that it was difficult to obtain a glimpse of his face. Alan waited. In a second or two he would have to pass the yew.
Just before the mysterious pursuer reached the old tree, he stopped. Alan furtively glanced to his left. He saw that Annaik had suddenly halted. She stood intent, as though listening. Possibly she had awaked. He saw her lips move. She spoke, or called something; what, he could not hear because of the intermittent screaming of the peacocks.
When he looked at the man in the shadow he started. A moonbeam had penetrated the obscurity, and the face was white against the black background of a cypress.
Alan recognized the man in a moment. It was Jud Kerbastiou, the forester. What ... was it possible: could he be the "J" who had linked his initial with that of Annaik?
It was incredible. The man was not only a boor, but one with rather an ill repute. At any rate, he was known to be a poacher as well as a woodlander of the old Breton kind—men who would never live save in the forest, any more than a gypsy would become a clerk and live in a street.
It was said among the peasants of Kerival that his father, old Iouenn Kerbastiou, the charcoal burner, was an illegitimate brother of the late Marquis—so that Jud, or Judik, as he was generally called, was a blood-relation of the great folk at the château. Once this had been hinted to the Marquis Tristran. It was for the first and last time. Since then, Jud Kerbastiou had become more morose than ever, and was seldom seen among his fellows. When not with his infirm old father, at the hut in the woods that were to the eastward of the forest-hamlet of Ploumael, he was away in the densely wooded reaches to the south. Occasionally he was seen upon the slopes of the Black Hills, but this was only in winter, when he crossed over into Upper Brittany with a mule-train laden with cut fagots.
That he was prowling about the home domain of Kerival was itself ominous; but that in this stealthy manner he should be following Annaik was to Allan a matter of genuine alarm. Surely the man could mean no evil against one of the Big House, and one, too, so much admired, and in a certain way loved, as Annaik de Kerival? And yet, the stealthy movements of the peasant, his crouching gait, his patient dogging of her steps—and this, doubtless, ever since she had crossed the glade from the forest to the cypresses—all this had a menacing aspect.