rcass.

If La Poche is a place to be shunned by day--at night it becomes
terrible; it seems to breathe the hidden viciousness of its past, as if
its ruins were the tombs of its bygone criminals.

I kept on the road, passed another carcass and drew abreast of a third,
which I stepped out of the road to examine. Both its floors had long
before I was born dropped into its cellar; its threshold beneath my feet
was slippery with green slime; I looked up through its ribs, from which
hung festoons of cobwebs and dead vines, like shreds of dried flesh
hanging from a skeleton.

Still pursuing my way, I came across an old well; the bucket was drawn
up and its chain wet; it was the first sign of habitation I had come
across. As my hand touched the windlass, I instinctively gave it a turn;
it creaked dismally and a dog barked savagely at the sound from
somewhere up the hillside; then the sharp, snappy yelping of other dogs
higher up followed.

I stopped, felt in my pockets and slipped two shells into my gun,
heavily loaded for duck, with the feeling that if I were forced to shoot
I would hold high over their heads. As I closed the breech of my gun and
clicked back my hammers to be ready for any emergency, the tall figure
of a man loomed up in the grassy road ahead of me, his legs in a ray of
moonlight, the rest of him in shadow.

"Does this road lead out to the main road?" I called to him, not being
any too sure that it did.

"Who is there?" he demanded sharply and in perfect French; then he
advanced and I saw that the heavy stick he carried with a firm grip was
mounted in silver.

"A hunter, monsieur," I returned pleasantly, noticing now his dress and
bearing.

It was so dark where we stood, that I could not yet distinguish his
features.

"May I ask you, monsieur, whom I have the pleasure of meeting," I
ventured, my mind now more at rest.

He strode toward me.

"My name is de Brissac," said he, extending his hand. "Forgive me," he
added with a good-natured laugh, "if I startled you; it is hardly the
place to meet a gentleman in at this hour. Have you missed your way?"

"No," I replied, "I shot late and took a short cut to reach my home." I
pointed in the direction of the marshes while I searched his face which
was still shrouded in gloom, in my effort to see what manner of man I
had run across.

"And have you had good luck?" he inquired with a certain meaning in his
voice, as if he was still in doubt regarding my