“Where the devil are we?” asked the stout sportsman. He wiped his brow as he spoke, and propped himself against a tree in the field opposite his companion, feeling quite unequal to clearing the broad ditch that lay between them. “And you ask that question of _me_!” retorted the other, laughing from his bed of tall brown grasses on the top of the bank. He flung the end of his cigar into the ditch, exclaiming, “I swear by Saint Hubert that no one shall catch me risking myself again in a country that I don’t know with a magistrate, even if, like you, my dear d’Albon, he happens to be an old schoolfellow.” “Why, Philip, have you really forgotten your own language? You surely must have left your wits behind you in Siberia,” said the stouter of the two, with a glance half-comic, half-pathetic at the guide-post distant about a hundred paces from them. “I understand,” replied the one addressed as Philip. He snatched up his rifle, suddenly sprang to his feet, made but one jump of it into the field, and rushed off to the guide-post. “This way, d’Albon, here you are! left about!” he shouted, gesticulating in the direction of the highroad. “_To Baillet and l’Isle-Adam!_” he went on; “so if we go along here, we shall be sure to come upon the cross-road to Cassan.” “Quite right, Colonel,” said M. d’Albon, putting the cap with which he had been fanning himself back on his head. “Then _forward_! highly respected Councillor,” returned Colonel Philip, whistling to the dogs, that seemed already to obey him rather than the magistrate their owner. “Are you aware, my lord Marquis, that two leagues yet remain before us?” inquired the malicious soldier. “That village down yonder must be Baillet.” “Great heavens!” cried the Marquis d’Albon. “Go on to Cassan by all means, if you like; but if you do, you will go alone. I prefer to wait here, storm or no storm; you can send a horse for me from the chateau. You have been making game of me, Sucy. We were to have a nice day’s sport by ourselves; we were not to go very far from Cassan, and go over ground that I knew. Pooh! instead of a day’s fun, you have kept me running like a greyhound since four o’clock this morning, and nothing but a cup or two of milk by way of breakfast. Oh! if ever you find yourself in a court of law, I will take care that the day goes against you if you were in the right a hundred times over.” The dejected sportsman sat himself down on one of the stumps at the foot of the guide-post, disencumbered himself of his rifle and empty game-bag, and heaved a prolonged sigh. “Oh, France, behold thy Deputies!” laughed Colonel de Sucy. “Poor old d’Albon; if you had spent six months at the other end of Siberia as I did...” He broke off, and his eyes sought the sky, as if the story of his troubles was a secret between himself and God. “Come, march!” he added. “If you once sit down, it is all over with you.”