"If you are not a coward, you will come to Grand Sire's Rock to-morrow morning with your gun loaded. I shall have mine. Come alone, I shall be alone. "I hate you. You shall know my name when I have told you to your face the reason of my hatred. "Grand Sire's Rock stands in a lonely part of your forest. I shall be there all the morning, and all day if necessary, waiting for you: so you will have no excuse for failing to come." This absurd effusion can be explained only by Frederick's youth and intense animosity, as well as his utter lack of experience and the isolation in which he had lived. This effusion written and posted, the youth feigned unusual calmness all day, so no one would suspect his designs. When night came, he told Madame Bastien that he felt very tired and intended to stay in bed all the next forenoon, and that he did not want any one to come to his room until after he got up; so the mother, hoping rest would prove beneficial to her son, promised his request should be complied with. At daybreak Frederick cautiously made his escape through his bedroom window and hastened to the place of rendezvous. As he approached it his heart throbbed with ferocious ardour, feeling confident that Raoul de Pont Brillant would hasten to avenge the insult contained in this insulting note he had received. "He shall kill me, or I will kill him," Frederick said to himself. "If he kills me, so much the better. What is the use of dragging out a life poisoned with envy? If I kill him--" He shuddered at the thought, then, ashamed of his weakness, he continued: "If I kill him, it will be better yet. He will cease to enjoy the pleasures and luxuries that arouse my envy. If I kill him," added the unfortunate youth, trying to justify this bloodthirsty resolve on his part, "his luxury will no longer flaunt itself before my poverty and the poverty of many others who are even more to be pitied than I am." The name of Grand Sire's Rock had been bestowed centuries before on a pile of big granite boulders only a short distance from one of the least frequented paths in the forest, and, as a number of large chestnut and pine trees had sprung up between the moss-covered rocks, it was a wild and lonely spot, well suited for a hostile meeting. Frederick deposited his gun in a sort of natural grotto formed by a deep opening half concealed by a thick curtain of ivy. This spot was only about forty yards from the road by which the marquis must come if he came at all, so Frederick stationed himself in a place where he could see quite a distance down the road without being seen. One hour, two hours, three hours passed and Raoul de Pont Brillant did not come.