ed censer, and
float over the bosom of the plain ere they wreathe the mountain side;
all the bushes sing, every leaf is shining to welcome the glorious sun
as he rises majestically over that high dark range, and the bright blue
dome of day is revealed in all its purity.

Plunge onward to the forest--you will perhaps fall in with one of the
_braconniers_--must I call them poachers?--of which there are many; all
alike, in one sense, yet each having the most whimsical characteristics.
The reader knows my friend Navarre, but I must now introduce him to
another of the cronies of my youth, the Pere Seguin, the thoughts of
whom revive all the sweet recollections of my home when my family lived
in the ancient and picturesque Vezelay.

Seguin's "form and feature" are as well impressed upon my memory as
those even of Navarre. Could any one forget him? I should think not; for
he was so fantastic and mysterious, such a determined sportsman and
eccentric desperado, that he was known to all Le Morvan.

As well as I remember, he was about fifty-five years of age when I first
knew him; from his earliest boyhood he had fancied and loved a
forester's life, and for more than forty years had realized his dreams
of its wild independence. The woods, the rocks, the streams had no
secrets for him; he understood all their murmurs and their silence--he
knew the habits of every bird and beast of these forests and the
whereabouts of every large trout in his clear cold hole.

But it is of no use to describe Pere Seguin; to know him you must hunt
with him, and that pretty often, too--as I have done from my earliest
youth. I am now with him, on one of those joyous mornings of my boyhood,
and having threaded the woods for an hour, he has placed me in ambuscade
at the corner of a copse. Here, after a short delay, he pulls out his
watch, a time-piece weighing about two pounds, and after a mute
consultation with the hands, says in a low decided tone:

"Good! Three o'clock. Stop here, youngster, and in an hour I shall send
you a buck."

"A buck at four o'clock? How are you to tell that?" And I felt that I
opened my eyes as an oyster does his bivalve domicile at high water. "A
buck! you are joking."

"I never joke," said the Pere Seguin with a hoarse grunt, walking away,
and his face did not belie his words.

"Well, then, but how can you possibly--Stop, do, for one moment. Hear
me! holla! Pere Seguin! I say, you old humbug.--By Socrates, he is off