ogether ought to be slyer than the otter."

"How so, my old necromancer?"

"Why, bless you! we are as stupid as the beasts, and so we come to
understand the beasts. Now, see, this is what we'll do. When the otter
wants to get home Mouche and I'll frighten it here, and you'll frighten
it over there; frightened by us and frightened by you it will jump on
the bank, and when it takes to earth, it is lost! It can't run; it has
web feet for swimming. Ho, ho! it will make you laugh, such floundering!
you don't know whether you are fishing or hunting! The general up at Les
Aigues, I have known him to stay here three days running, he was so bent
on getting an otter."

Blondet, armed with a branch cut for him by the old man, who requested
him to whip the water with it when he called to him, planted himself in
the middle of the river by jumping from stone to stone.

"There, that will do, my good gentleman."

Blondet stood where he was told without remarking the lapse of time, for
every now and then the old fellow made him a sign as much as to say that
all was going well; and besides, nothing makes time go so fast as the
expectation that quick action is to succeed the perfect stillness of
watching.

"Pere Fourchon," whispered the boy, finding himself alone with the old
man, "there's _really_ an otter!"

"Do you see it?"

"There, see there!"

The old fellow was dumb-founded at beholding under water the
reddish-brown fur of an actual otter.

"It's coming my way!" said the child.

"Hit him a sharp blow on the head and jump into the water and hold him
fast down, but don't let him go!"

Mouche dove into the water like a frightened frog.

"Come, come, my good gentleman," cried Pere Fourchon to Blondet, jumping
into the water and leaving his sabots on the bank, "frighten him!
frighten him! Don't you see him? he is swimming fast your way!"

The old man dashed toward Blondet through the water, calling out with
the gravity that country people retain in the midst of their greatest
excitements:--

"Don't you see him, there, along the rocks?"

Blondet, placed by direction of the old fellow in such a way that
the sun was in his eyes, thrashed the water with much satisfaction to
himself.

"Go on, go on!" cried Pere Fourchon; "on the rock side; the burrow is
there, to your left!"

Carried away by excitement and by his long waiting, Blondet slipped from
the stones into the water.

"Ha! brave you are, my good gentleman! Twe