I was out early this morning, for I was going to breakfast with Fauchard. I passed the glades where the rabbits were sporting, chasing each other in circles smoothly and for all the world like toy rabbits on wheels and driven by clockwork. I passed the pools where the bulrushes stood up out of the mist, and nothing spoke of water save the splash of the frog, or the ripple of the water-rat swimming. Fauchard was waiting for me. We had breakfast--a simple enough repast, consisting of coffee, biscuits, and cheese--and then we started off to visit the traps and see what they had caught. When Fauchard had collected his harvest of stoats and moles, killed two snakes, and shot a marauding cat, it was late morning; the sun was well over the treetops, and it was time for me to return home. "Take that path," said the ranger. "Turn neither to the right nor left, and it will lead you straight as an omnibus to the pavilion." I bade him good morning, and, taking the path indicated, I set off. It was not a drive; in fact, it was so narrow in parts that the hawthorn bushes growing in this part of the wood nearly met; the fern in places nearly blocked the way. It was warm, and very silent. When I paused now and then to listen, I could hear nothing except the buzzing of wasps and flies. The ground in places was boggy, the path, it seemed to me, had not been used for years. Stories of murderers and goblins occurred to my mind and made me press on all the faster. I had turned past a clump of alders when before me I caught a glimpse of someone going in the same direction as myself--a boy of my own age, to judge from his height, but I could not see what he was dressed in, or whether he was a gypsy or a woodranger's child, for he was always just ahead of my sight at the turnings, glimpsed for a moment and then gone. I halloed to him to stop, for his company would have been very acceptable in that lonely place, but he made no reply. I ran, and pausing out of breath, I heard his footsteps running, too; then they ceased, as though he were waiting for me. It was like a game of hide-and-seek, and I laughed. I walked softly and as quickly as I could, hoping to surprise him. Then, at the next turning, I saw him. He was amidst the bushes on the right; his head just peeped over the tops of them, and--he was a child of about my own age, and extraordinarily like little Carl. Filled with astonishment, not thinking what I did, I ran through the bushes towards him, calling his name. Then I remember nothing more. CHAPTER XVI THE VICOMTE