d not let him," added Tanrade. "Quick! Where are your traps?
We have a good forty kilometres ahead of us; we must not keep the Baron
waiting." And the composer of ballets rushed into the house and
shouldered my valise containing a dry change.

"You shall have enough partridges to fill your larder for a month," I
heard him tell Suzette, and he did not forget to pat her rosy cheek in
passing. Suzette laughed and struggled by him, her firm young arms
hugging my gun and shell-case.

Before I could stop him, the cure, in his black soutane, had clambered
nimbly to the roof of the big car and was lashing my traps next to
Tanrade's and his own. At this instant I started to take a long breath
of pure morning air--and hesitated, then I caught the alert eye of the
chauffeur, who was grinning.

"What are you burning? Fish oil?" said I.

"_Mon Dieu_, monsieur----" began the chauffeur.

"Cheese," called down the cure, pointing to a round paper parcel on the
roof of the limousine. "Tanrade got it at daylight; woke up the whole
village getting it."

"Had to," explained Tanrade, as Suzette helped him into his great coat.
"The Baron is out of cheese; he added a postscript to my invitation
praying that I would be amiable enough to bring one. _Eh voila!_ There
it is, and real cheese at that. Come, get in, quick!" And he opened the
door of the limousine, the interior of which was lined in gray suede and
appointed with the daintiest of feminine luxuries.

"Look out for that row of gold bottles back of you, you brute of a
farmer!" Tanrade counseled me, as the cure found his seat. "If you
scratch those monograms the Baroness will never forgive you."

Then, with a wave to Suzette, we swept away from my house by the marsh,
were hurled through Pont du Sable, and shot out of its narrowest end
into the fresh green country beyond.

It was so thoroughly chic and Parisian, this limousine. Only a few days
ago it had been shopping along the Rue de la Paix, and later rushing to
the cool Bois de Boulogne carrying a gracious woman to dinner; now it
held two vagabonds and a cure. We tore on while we talked
enthusiastically of the day's shooting in store for us. The cure was in
his best humour. How he does love to shoot and what a rattling good shot
he is! Neither Tanrade nor myself, and we have shot with him day in and
day out on the marsh and during rough nights in his gabion, has ever
beaten him.

On we flew, past the hamlet of Fourche-la-Vill