At that moment, the arrival of Wilfred with a large body of fresh enemies took place, and Etienne was yet within hearing when his rival stood in the doorway and cried aloud: 

“Etienne, son of Hugo, has been here and escaped; hunt him down, men and dogs; he can hardly have passed the morass; we must not let him live to become a murderer like his father.”

The voice sounded like a summons from the dead.  Etienne turned pale; then the blood coursed rapidly through his veins, as he saw by the light of the moon, which emerged just then from a cloud, his hated rival, standing in front of the farmhouse—­alive, and for the time victorious.

Now all was clear.  Wilfred was the cause of the calamities which had fallen upon them, and the leader of the outlaws; and Etienne, who, to do him justice, never suspected the true author of the crime, doubted not that his rival had fired the monastery to conceal his flight.

He felt an intense desire that he might grapple with his young foe in the death struggle.  Willingly would he have accepted such a decision between their rival claims; but he was alone, wounded, exhausted, a faithful dog his sole friend.  He felt that the day of vengeance must be postponed.

He spoke to the poor hound, and succeeded in making it comprehend that he wanted “to go home.”  With that canine sagacity which approaches very near to reason, the dog at once sought for the path by which they had entered the morass, found it, and ran forward eagerly.  Etienne entered it, trembling with hope, when the dog stopped, growled, and came back to its lord.  The steps of many feet were heard approaching.

“The place swarms with foes,” muttered the hunter, who had become in his turn the hunted.

A crash in the bush behind, and a huge English mastiff rushed upon Etienne.  His Norman sleuth hound threw himself upon the assailant of his master, and a terrific struggle ensued.  Etienne did not dare wait to see its conclusion or help his canine protector, for the noise of the conflict was drawing all the English there; but he struggled back to the open, and ran along the inner edge of the wood, hoping to find another track through the morass.

Suddenly he stumbled upon a swift little stream flowing down a bank into the desert of slime.  He felt at once that it must rise from the chain of hills behind, and that by following it he might get out of the swamp; it was all too like a mountain current to have its origin in the level, and he determined to follow it.

Besides, if he walked up the stream, he would baffle the English dogs, for water leaves no scent; in short, collecting all his energies, he strode rapidly up the brook.

But his strength was not equal to a sustained effort; the excitement of the night had been too much for him; and after he had traversed about a mile, he sat down to rest on the bank, and fell into a dead faint.

The first beams of the rising sun had illuminated the horizon, the very time at which poor Pierre was led forth to die, when an aged Englishwoman, coming down to draw water at the spring, espied the fainting youth.