ng a neighbourhood where the damp mosses showed many tracks
converging, and as Grancey thought he distinguished a distant sound
Germain listened and heard what he judged to be the faint refrain of a
song. He now adopted greater caution, placing his gamekeepers in a body
to remain ready at call, and at different points setting his friends in
easy reach of each other.

Grancey and he crept along, guided by the uncertain sounds of the song,
but found that they grew fainter. On this they retraced their path and
were gratified to hear the sound increase again. They discovered a point
where it would not grow any louder, and here Germain paused. "I have the
secret!" he whispered, and placed his ear to the ground. The Baron
imitated him. True enough the singing was _below_. They caught other
voices now. Lecour pondered a few moments. He followed an irregular rent
in the rock and disappeared to one side. Returning on tiptoe, excited
for the first time, he beckoned Grancey to accompany him and led the way
with the greatest precaution to a long crack in the side of a hill,
scarcely discernible without the closest scrutiny, through which the
accents came quite audibly, and they caught sight of the objects below
in a grey light. They made out a narrow, oblique cavern, formed by the
widening of what geologists call a "fault" in the shaly rock. Eight men,
all in rags with one exception, were sitting and lying about. Stretched
on the ground, drinking alternately from a bottle, were two, one of whom
was singing snatches of a rambling _vaudeville_.

Grancey touched Germain and pointed out that their firearms were in a
heap at the entrance, and that a rope attached there and coiled loosely
showed their means of exit down the face of the cliff.

The man who was not in rags was standing up, the centre of attraction.
He appeared to be a visitor.

"Stay with us the night," said the leader, a big man of ferocious brows
and keen black eyes. "Our friend, his Majesty, has sent us some of his
venison."

"The Big Hog?" said the stranger.

A round of laughter echoed through the cavern. The stoutness of the King
had given rise to this nickname among the people.

"When his head is ours it will be better than his venison," he added.

About this man's face there was something strikingly horrible and
subtle. His countenance was the image of a grinning death's-head. Its
intelligent, stealthy, and sinister sunken eyes, its depressed nose and
heart