Once, towards evening, the farmer saw him getting his supper. The farmer saw the lad before the lad saw him. He stole upon him unawares, bent upon capturing the thief. He had almost achieved his purpose, and was within half a dozen yards of the miscreant, when, not looking where he was going in his anxiety to keep his eyes upon the pilferer, he caught his sabot in a hole, and came down upon his knees. As he came he gave vent to a deep Breton execration. Startled, Bertie looked behind and saw the foe. He was off like the wind. When the farmer had regained, if not his temper, at least his perpendicular, he saw, fifty yards ahead, a wild-looking, ragged figure tearing for his life. The Breton was not built for speed. He perceived that he might as well attempt to rival the swallow in its flight as outrun the boy. So he contented himself with shaking his fists and shouting curses after the robber of his turnip field. Never washing, never taking his clothes from his back nor his shoes from his feet, in appearance Bertie soon presented a figure which would have discredited a scarecrow. Scrambling through hedges, constant walking over stony ways, beds on dampish soil--these things told upon his garments; they soon began to drop away from him in shreds. His face went well with his clothing. Very white and drawn, very thin and dirty, his ravenous eyes looked out from under a tangled shock of hair. One night he had been startled in his sleep, as he often was, and he had sprung up, as a wild creature springs, and run for his life, not waiting to inquire what it was that had startled him, whether it was the snapping of a twig or the movement of a rabbit or a bird. In his haste he left his hat behind him, and as he never returned to get it, afterwards he went with his head uncovered. It began to be rumoured about those parts that some strange thing had taken up its residence in the surrounding country. The Breton peasants and small farmers are ignorant, credulous, superstitious. The slightest incident of an unusual character they magnify into a mystery. It was told in the hamlets that some wild creature had made its appearance in their neighbourhood. Some said it was a boy, some said it was a man, some said it was a woman; some said it was neither one thing nor the other, but a monster which had taken human shape. Bertie lent an air of veracity to the different versions by his own proceedings. He was not in his own right mind. Had care been taken, and friends been near, all might have been well; as it was, fever was taking more and more possession of his brain. He shunned his fellow-creatures. At the sight of a little child he would take to his heels and run. He saw an enemy in every bush, in every tree; in a man or a woman he saw his worst enemy of all.