His shouts were echoed, near at hand, by a voice at once strange and familiar! His instinct divined a sudden danger in this strange echo. He stopped short, even as he was about to bound forward to the spot in which the deer had fallen. Another shout!--but this was to his companions! He was now confounded at the new echo and the fearful vision which this summons conjured up. At his side, and in his very ears, rose another shout--a shriek rather--much louder than his own--a wild, indescribable yell,--which sent a thrill of horror through his soul. At the same instant, a gaunt, wild man--a half-naked, half-famished form--darted from the thicket and stood directly before him in his path! "Ho! Ho! Ho!" howled the stranger. "Guernache!" was the single word, forced from the guilty soul of the criminal! "Guernache! Yes! Guernache, in his friend Lachane! Both are here! See you not? Look! Ho! Captain Albert,--look and see, and make yourself ready. Your time is short. You will hang and banish no longer!" Wild with exulting fury was the face of the speaker--terrible the language of his eyes--threatening the action of the uplifted arm. A keen blade flashed in his grasp, and the discovery which Albert made, that, in the wild man before him, he saw the person whom he had so wantonly and cruelly decreed to perish, sufficed to make him nerveless. The surprise deprived him of resource, while his guilty conscience enfeebled his arm, and took all courage from his soul. His match-lock was already discharged. The _couteau de chasse_ was at his side; but, before this could be drawn, he must be hewn down by the already uplifted weapon of his foe. Besides, even if drawn, what could he hope, by its employment, against the superior muscle and vigor of Lachane? These thoughts passed with a lightning-like rapidity through the brain of Albert. He felt that he had met his fate! He shrunk back from its encounter, and sent up a feeble but a painful cry for his creature,--"Pierre Renaud!" "Ha! ha! you cry for him in vain!" was the mocking answer of Lachane. "Renaud, that miserable villain--that wretch after thy own heart and fashion--hath quite as much need of thee as thou of him! Ye will serve each other never more to the prejudice of better men. Hark! hear you not? Even now they are dealing with him!" And, sure enough, even as he spoke, the screams of one in mortal terror, interrupted by several heavy blows in quick succession, seemed to confirm the truth of what Lachane had spoken. In that fearful moment Albert remembered the words, now full of meaning, which Nicholas Barré had spoken while they set forth. The hunter had indeed become the hunted. Lachane gave him little time for meditation. "They have done with him! Prepare! To your knees, Captain Albert! I give you time to make your peace with God--such time as you gave my poor Guernache! Prepare!"