e two guests in the middle. The keeper and those who carried the
game-bags followed. It was the solemn moment when the first shot it
awaited, when the heart beats a little, while the nervous finger keeps
feeling at the gun-lock every second.

Suddenly the shot went off. Hautot Senior had fired. They all stopped,
and saw a partridge breaking off from a covey which was rushing along at
a single flight to fall down into a ravine under a thick growth of
brushwood. The sportsman, becoming excited, rushed forward with rapid
strides, thrusting aside the briers which stood in his path, and he
disappeared in his turn into the thicket, in quest of his game.

Almost at the same instant, a second shot was heard.

"Ha! ha! the rascal!" exclaimed M. Bermont, "he will unearth a hare down
there."

They all waited, with their eyes riveted on the heap of branches through
which their gaze failed to penetrate.

The notary, making a speaking-trumpet of his hands, shouted:

"Have you got them?"

Hautot Senior made no response.

Then Cesar, turning towards the keeper, said to him:

"Just go, and assist him, Joseph. We must keep walking in a straight
line. We'll wait."

And Joseph, an old stump of a man, lean and knotty, all whose joints
formed protuberances, proceeded at an easy pace down the ravine,
searching at every opening through which a passage could be effected
with the cautiousness of a fox. Then, suddenly, he cried:

"Oh! come! come! an unfortunate thing has occurred."

They all hurried forward, plunging through the briers.

The elder Hautot, who had fallen on his side, in a fainting condition,
kept both his hands over his stomach, from which flowed down upon the
grass through the linen vest torn by the lead, long streamlets of blood.
As he was laying down his gun, in order to seize the partridge, within
reach of him, he had let the firearm fall, and the second discharge
going off with the shock, had torn open his entrails. They drew him out
of the trench; they removed his clothes, and they saw a frightful wound,
through which the intestines came out. Then, after having bandaged him
the best way they could, they brought him back to his own house, and
they awaited the doctor, who had been sent for, as well as a priest.

When the doctor arrived, he gravely shook his head, and, turning towards
young Hautot, who was sobbing on a chair:

"My poor boy," said he, "this has not a good look."

But, when the dressing was fin