"Where the evil spirit can, mere mortals can't, my lord," said Erhard, soberly. "He whom you call your guest has only to sound his trumpet, and all the animals of the forest will come to him, as the bird comes to the serpent." "Go to the devil, you old fool!" cried the governor, angrily. "I shall not have to go far for that, my lord," murmured he, in a low voice, pointing to Létorière, who was coming out of a coppice holding old Moick in leash. "Long life to you, baron!" cried Létorière; "if you have a mind, you can chase a full-grown buck, and strike him at my trap near the chapel. By the size of his tracks, I would lay a wager that it is one of those great deer with a white forehead and legs; the King of France has a number like them in his forest of Chambord. I should recognize their feet among a thousand. They have a magnificent shape." "You have good luck, Marquis," said the baron; "you are a sorcerer." "I am not a sorcerer, but it is your good blood-hound that deserves credit. I owe my stag to him. As to you, my brave Erhard," added he, turning towards the huntsman, "if you had had him at the end of your leash you would have done what I have done. Come, baron, to horse! to horse! It is a good league from here to my trap, and the November days are short. Here's your dog, Erhard!" At the same time the Marquis slipped a piece of gold into the huntsman's hand. But he, seizing a moment when the Marquis could not see him, threw away the piece as if it had been red-hot, and with the toe of his boot kicked it under the leaves. "Money of hell!" said he, in a low voice; "if I had put it into my pocket, in a quarter of an hour, instead of a piece of gold, I should have found a red bat or a black frog." Then the huntsman took the leash of his hound with as much precaution as if the Marquis had had the plague, and looked at the dog with disturbed tenderness, believing him to be already bewitched. After putting his thick boots over his buckskin splatterdashes, the Marquis mounted old Elphin, and the baron saw with a new pleasure that his guest was an excellent horseman. "Baron," cried Létorière, arriving at an enclosure in the forest, "here is my trap; unleash, I am going to enter the hedge with three or four of your oldest dogs in order to attack--" "One moment," said the baron, with a serious air; "you pass for a sorcerer in the eyes of Erhard Trusches; he will work badly if he takes you for the devil, for he will think more of his soul than the course of the stag." "How? explain yourself, baron!" "Come here, Erhard," said the governor. The huntsman advanced, looking agitated and alarmed. "Is it not true," continued the governor, "that you do not understand how my guest, who has never been in this forest, knows it so well. How he knows that the enclosure of the Hermit's Chapel is the best haunt of the stag, and that relays must be placed at the border of the Priory Plain?"