ds with an air of
perfect contentment. He flung off his coat briskly, and General D'Hubert
took off his own and folded it carefully on a stone.

"Suppose you take your principal to the other side of the wood and let
him enter exactly in ten minutes from now," suggested General D'Hubert
calmly, but feeling as if he were giving directions for his own
execution. This, however, was his last moment of weakness.

"Wait! Let us compare watches first."

He pulled out his own. The officer with the chipped nose went over to
borrow the watch of General Feraud. They bent their heads over them for
a time.

"That's it. At four minutes to five by yours. Seven to, by mine."

It was the cuirassier who remained by the side of General D'Hubert,
keeping his one eye fixed immovably on the white face of the watch he
held in the palm of his hand. He opened his mouth wide, waiting for the
beat of the last second, long before he snapped out the word:

"_Avancez!_"

General D'Hubert moved on, passing from the glaring sunshine of the
Provencal morning into the cool and aromatic shade of the pines. The
ground was clear between the reddish trunks, whose multitude, leaning at
slightly different angles, confused his eye at first. It was like going
into battle. The commanding quality of confidence in himself woke up in
his breast. He was all to his affair. The problem was how to kill his
adversary. Nothing short of that would free him from this imbecile
nightmare. "It's no use wounding that brute," he thought. He was known
as a resourceful officer. His comrades, years ago, used to call him "the
strategist." And it was a fact that he could think in the presence of
the enemy, whereas Feraud had been always a mere fighter. But a dead
shot, unluckily.

"I must draw his fire at the greatest possible range," said General
D'Hubert to himself.

At that moment he saw something white moving far off between the trees.
The shirt of his adversary. He stepped out at once between the trunks
exposing himself freely, then quick as lightning leaped back. It had
been a risky move, but it succeeded in its object. Almost simultaneously
with the pop of a shot a small piece of bark chipped off by the bullet
stung his ear painfully.

And now General Feraud, with one shot expended, was getting cautious.
Peeping round his sheltering tree, General D'Hubert could not see him
at all. This ignorance of his adversary's whereabouts carried with it a
sense of insecurity.