to spare; but his heart seemed to stop at
that moment, and he felt himself turning white in the darkness. The men
could hardly shoot into the trees without hitting him, though he had
slipped down as far as he could into the hollow trunk. He would be
horribly wounded, if not killed. It was a hard fate, to be shot as a
poacher might shoot a pheasant roosting on a bough. An unsportsmanlike
sort of death, Uncle Joseph would say. He held his breath. Should he
await it, or give himself back to the police by jumping down amongst
them?

The moment of danger passed. Angelot smiled as the men moved on, and hid
himself a little more completely.

"No," Simon said. "No shooting till you are obliged. His uncle lives
only a mile off, and he will come out if he hears a gun."

"So he would, the blessed little man!" muttered Angelot.

The men went on searching the wood, but with such stealthy movements, so
little noise, even so little perseverance, as it seemed to him, that he
was confirmed in his idea of Simon's sole responsibility. These men were
police, supposed to be all-powerful; but somehow they did not act or
talk as if Savary and the Emperor, or even Real, were behind them.

Angelot watched the light as it glimmered here and there, and listened
to the rustling in the bracken. Presently, when they were far off on the
other side of the little grove, he climbed out of the trunk and slipped
down from his tree. Simon might change his mind about shooting; in any
case it seemed safer to change one's position. Being close to the edge
of the _landes_, Angelot's first thought was to take to his heels and
run; then again that seemed risky, and a shot in the back was
undesirable. He dived in among the bracken, which was taller than
himself, and grew thick on the ground like a small forest. Half
crawling, half walking, stopping dead still to watch the wandering
gleams of light and to hear the steps and voices of the men, then
pushing gently on again, Angelot reached a hiding-place on the other
side of the grove. Here the bracken, taller and thicker than ever, grew
against and partly over the ruined walls of the old farm. In the very
middle of it, where the wall made a sudden turn, there was a hollow,
half sheltered by stones, and a black yawning hole below, the old well
of the homestead. All the top of it was in ruins; a fox had made its
hole halfway down; there was still water at the bottom of the well.
Here, plunged in the darkness, An