anaille_ will do, for only this morning he sent me word
threatening to break up the hunt. Nothing would please him better than
have us all served with a _proces-verbal_ for trespassing."

I confess I was not anxious to be hauled before the court of the
country-seat time after time during a trial conducted at a snail's pace
and be relieved of several hundred francs, for this is what a
_proces-verbal_ meant. It was easily seen that the Baron was in a no
more tranquil state of mind himself.

"You are all my guests!" he exclaimed, with sudden heat. "That _sacre_
individual will deal with _me_. It is _I_ who am alone responsible," he
generously added. "Ah! We shall see. If you meet him, don't let him
bulldoze you. Don't show him your hunting permit if he demands it, for
what he will want is your name. I have explained all this to the rest."

"_Eh bien!_ my dear friends," he called back to the others as we reached
a cross-road, "we shall begin shooting here. Half of you to the
right--half to the left!"

"What is the name of your farmer?" I inquired, as we spread out into two
slowly moving companies.

"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