He turned his head sharply and looked at the bear with one of his quick, bird-like movements, just at the same moment as the bear looked at him.  But there was nothing on the artless Antoine’s face but mild, sentimental inquiry.

“Ha! he is cunning!” muttered Pepin.  “Do you remember, my mother, how—­Mon Dieu! he’s got it!”

That was very apparent.  Antoine had nipped up the fowl, and with one or two silent crunches was in the act of swallowing it.  So pressed was he for time that at first he did not detect the fiery horrors he was swallowing.  But in a minute or two he realised that something unlooked for had occurred, that there was a young volcano in his mouth that had to be quenched at any cost So he sprang to his feet and rushed at a bucket of water that stood in a corner of the room, and went so hastily that he knocked the bucket over and then fell on it.  The burning pain inside him made him snap and growl and fall to worrying the unfortunate bucket.

As for Pepin, he evinced the liveliest joy.  He threw the harness from him, leapt from the bench, and seizing his long stick, danced out on the floor in front of the bear.  The good old dame stood with clasped hands in a far corner of the room, looking with considerable apprehension upon this fresh domestic development.

“Aha, Antoine, mon enfant!” cried the dwarf, “and so my supper you will steal, will you?  And how you like it, mon ami? Now, for to digest it, a dance, that is good.  So—­get up, get up and dance, my sweet innocence!  Houp-la!”

But just at that moment there came a knock at the door.  It was pushed open, and the unstable breed, Bastien Lagrange, entered.  Antoine, beside himself with internal discomfort and rage, eyed the intruder with a fiery, ominous light in his eyes.  Here surely was a heaven-sent opportunity for letting off steam.  Before his master could prevent him he had rushed open-mouthed at Lagrange and thrown him upon his back.  Quicker than it takes to write it, he had ripped the clothing from his body with his great claws and was at his victim’s throat.  The dwarf, with a strange, hoarse cry, threw himself upon the bear.  With his powerful arms and huge hands he caught it by the throat, and compressed the windpipe, until the astonished animal loosed its hold and opened its mouth to gasp for breath.  Then, bracing himself, Pepin threw it backwards with as much seeming ease as when, on one occasion, he had strangled a young cinnamon in the woods.  Bastien Lagrange lay back with the blood oozing from his mouth, the whites of his eyes turned upwards.  He tried to speak, but the words came indistinctly from his lips.  He put one hand to his breast, and a small packet fell to the ground.

“From the daughter of Douglas,” he gasped.  And then he lay still.

CHAPTER XXIII

THE DEPARTURE OF PEPIN