"Halloa, devil! are you deaf?" thundered a sneering voice from a crag at the opposite side. "Come, come, it's time we were moving." The summons came from a broad, short, swarthy fellow, with black mustaches and beard, arrayed in a suit of dusky red. He had one hand raised high above his head beckoning to her, and with the other he furiously shook the spreading branch of a tree beside him; the prominent whites of his eyes, and his grinning teeth, were, even at that distance, seen conspicuous; and so shaggy, furious, and unearthly did he seem, that he might well have represented some wild huntsman or demon of the wood. It seemed, indeed, as though a sort of witches' dance were to be held that night in the old park of Charrebourg, and that some of the preternatural company had reached the trysting-place before their time. The ill-omened woman in white hastily gathered up her mantle, without any gesture or word of farewell. With hurried strides her tall figure glided off toward the apparition in red, and both speedily disappeared among the hazy cover at the other side. The little hollow was now deserted, except for Lucille. It was not till they had quite vanished, and that she was left there alone, that she felt something akin to terror steal over her, and hurried from the scene of her strange interview as from a haunted spot. A little way up the rising bank Gabriel was awaiting her return, sorely disappointed that fortune had in no wise made her debtor to his valor. Long before she reached home the sun had gone down, and the long dusky shadows had given place to the thin, cold haze of approaching night. Often as she glided onward among rocks and bushes she felt an instinctive impulse, something between terror and aversion, prompting her to hurl the little spiral vial far from her among the wild weeds and misty brakes, where, till doomsday, it might never be found again. But other feelings, stranger in their kind, determined her at least to defer the sacrifice, and so she reached her chamber with the mysterious gift fast in her tiny grasp. Here she again examined it, more minutely than before; it contained neither fluid nor powder of any sort, and was free from any perfume or odor whatsoever; and excepting that the more closely she inspected it, the more she discovered in its workmanship to excite her admiration, her careful and curious investigation was without result. As she carefully folded up the curious souvenir, and secreted it in the safest corner of the safest drawer, she thought over the interview again and again, and always with the same result as respected the female who had bestowed it, namely, that if not actually a lady, she had at least the education and the manners of a person above the working classes.