After a moment's silence, Erhard said, with a timid and uneasy air, "Is my lord well acquainted with his guest?" "What do you mean, Erhard? Where is the Marquis? Did he not come with you this morning to the wood?" "Yes, my lord, that is why I ask you if you are sure of him. See here, my lord, it will bring me mischief, joking last night at supper about the blessing." "Ah! explain yourself!" "I mean to say, my lord"--and Erhard went on with a low and trembling voice--"I very much fear that your guest is he who appears sometimes in the moonlight, in the solitary recesses of the forest, to offer to desperate huntsmen three balls, one of gold, one of silver, and one of lead, and the whole at the price of their souls!" added Erhard, with a gloomy and frightened air. "So! you take my guest for the devil, then," cried the baron, shrugging his shoulders and laughing; "your morning cup has turned your brain, old Erhard!" The huntsman shook his head, and replied: "My lord, explain to me how it is that he whom you call your guest, and who has never been in this forest before, knows it as well as I do." "What do you mean to say?" said the baron, very much astonished. "This morning at daylight, when I started with the Marquis, 'Master Erhard,' said he to me, 'if you will let me take a hound, we will share the search of the forest. I will go over the enclosures of the priory of the Hermit's Chapel, of the Thunder-struck Fir-tree, and of the Black Pool.'" "He said that?" said the baron, stupefied. "Just as I have told you, my lord, and he added: 'I have great hope of starting a full-grown buck, for, in the woods about the Hermit's Chapel, stags are plenty. You, Master Erhard, on your part, seek to start a wild boar. They are always to be found in the forests of Enrichs, the brambles are so thick. Then the baron can have his choice between the foot of the stag or the track of the wild boar.' 'But, sir,' I said, affrighted, 'you know our forests well, then? you have often hunted them?' 'I have never hunted here,' he answered, 'but I know it as well as you do. Go ahead! good luck, Master Erhard!'--and then he disappeared in the woods, taking with him poor Moick, our best boar-hound, whom lie will perhaps change into a lynx, or a beast with seven paws, by his diabolical witchcraft." The baron was not at all superstitious, but he could not comprehend what Erhard said, and he knew him to be too respectful to joke with his master. Nevertheless, he could not but admit that the Marquis was endowed with such topographical knowledge as the huntsman described. "And what have you done in the search?" he asked Erhard. "He whom you call your guest has brought me ill-luck,--I have done nothing." "Nothing? how does that happen? This is the first time in two years that you have not had game,--and on a day, too, when we are going to hunt with a stranger!"