My heart was jumping like a hammer. I rose on one elbow and looked fearfully around. To my amazement and horror, as I scrambled to my feet, I saw a wild boar with its snout to the ground make its way through the underbrush and disappear deeper into the woods. Then came another surprise. De Marsac was standing as white as a corpse. He seemed to have forgotten me entirely. His eyes were fastened on the direction which the boar had taken. His whole body was moving nervously as though he were greatly excited. From what I had noticed before I knew a fresh thought had started in his mind. Like a flash he was over helping me to my feet. “Henri,” he called. “You can thank me for saving your life! If I hadn’t warned you in time, you would have been gored to death!” I made no reply for the thoughts were scared out of me. “We’ll go home now, Henri,” De Marsac said in a trembling voice. I went along with him. From the time we left the woods he spoke not a word to me nor did he seem conscious of my presence. There was something brewing in his mind. He continually snapped his fingers as though he was impatient. He muttered under his breath and shook his head in approval of what was stirring in his thoughts. Once I heard him mumble, “The wild boar. The very thing. We’ll hunt the wild boar.” Again, when he appeared forgetful that I was there, he growled, “It will be an easier way—when we hunt the wild boar.” He laughed confidently to himself. “We’ll start tomorrow—at dawn.” When we came to the gravel path that led to the house, he clapped me on the shoulder. “Tomorrow will be my lucky day—eh, Henri?” he said. CHAPTER VI WE HUNT THE WILD BOAR We reached home in the early afternoon. It was then that I got a clearer vision of De Marsac’s duplicity and of the game that he was playing. No sooner had we laid eyes upon my brother and the Count, when he began to tell of our adventure in the woods in the most excited fashion. He drew a most vivid picture of the danger I had been in. He painted himself in the rôle of my rescuer. His voice took on a high tremulous tone as though he too had suffered from the shock and were really alarmed at my nearness to death. Every now and then he turned to me to bear him out in this or that assertion but went rapidly on again before I had time to utter a sound. He clapped me on the back. He tugged me by the elbow. He looked beamingly into my face. To see and hear him you would have thought that I was lucky to be alive and you would have considered him the bravest man in the world. At last with a fine frenzy he concluded. “We must track this monster to his lair,” he shouted. “We must drive him to his death.” I was like a fish floundering on dry land. To me this man was all fraud and froth. I looked appealingly towards my brother with the hope that he would see beneath it all. The old Count rose and stretched himself.