to east, and drawing
a shadowy veil across the sky. The wind was still, save in the upper
regions of the air, so that the weight of the atmosphere seemed to
compress the steamy heat of the earth into the forest glades. The tall
forest trees shut out every breath of air so completely that the little
valley across which the sportsman was making his way was as hot as a
furnace; the silent forest seemed parched with the fiery heat. Birds and
insects were mute; the topmost twigs of the trees swayed with scarcely
perceptible motion. Any one who retains some recollection of the summer
of 1819 must surely compassionate the plight of the hapless supporter
of the ministry who toiled and sweated over the stubble to rejoin his
satirical comrade. That gentleman, as he smoked his cigar, had arrived,
by a process of calculation based on the altitude of the sun, to the
conclusion that it must be about five o'clock.

"Where the devil are we?" asked the stout sportsman. He wiped his brow
as he spoke, and propped himself against a tree in the field opposite
his companion, feeling quite unequal to clearing the broad ditch that
lay between them.

"And you ask that question of _me_!" retorted the other, laughing from
his bed of tall brown grasses on the top of the bank. He flung the end
of his cigar into the ditch, exclaiming, "I swear by Saint Hubert that
no one shall catch me risking myself again in a country that I don't
know with a magistrate, even if, like you, my dear d'Albon, he happens
to be an old schoolfellow."

"Why, Philip, have you really forgotten your own language? You surely
must have left your wits behind you in Siberia," said the stouter of the
two, with a glance half-comic, half-pathetic at the guide-post distant
about a hundred paces from them.

"I understand," replied the one addressed as Philip. He snatched up his
rifle, suddenly sprang to his feet, made but one jump of it into the
field, and rushed off to the guide-post. "This way, d'Albon, here you
are! left about!" he shouted, gesticulating in the direction of the
highroad. "_To Baillet and l'Isle-Adam!_" he went on; "so if we go along
here, we shall be sure to come upon the cross-road to Cassan."

"Quite right, Colonel," said M. d'Albon, putting the cap with which he
had been fanning himself back on his head.

"Then _forward_! highly respected Councillor," returned Colonel Philip,
whistling to the dogs, that seemed already to obey him rather than the
magistra