“Of course, you generous child!  Otherwise he’d have gone clear away.  That was a cracking shot, too—­clean through the backbone at the base of the skull....  Look at Rosalie!  She’s unstrapped her snow-shoes and she and Delancy are crawling on all-fours!”

Kemp had now joined the stalkers; he was a wise old hunter, and Duane and Geraldine, keeping very still, watched the operations side by side.

For half an hour Rosalie lay motionless in the snow on the forest’s edge, and Geraldine was beginning to fret at the prospect of her being too benumbed by the cold to use her rifle, when Duane touched her on the arm and drew her attention to a fourth boar.

The animal came on from behind Rosalie and to Delancy’s right—­a good-sized, very black fellow, evidently suspicious yet tempted to reconnoitre the feeding-ground.

“Oh, dear, oh, dear!” she whispered; “what a shot Delancy has!  Why doesn’t he see him!  What on earth is Kemp about?  Why, the boar is within ten feet of Delancy’s legs and doesn’t see or wind him!”

“Look!”

Kemp had caught sight of the fourth boar.  Geraldine and Duane saw his dilemma, saw him silently give Rosalie the signal to fire at the nearest boar in the open, then saw him turn like a flash and almost drag Delancy to his feet.

“Kill that pig, now!” he thundered—­“unless you want him hackin’ your shins!”

The boar stood in his tracks, bristling, furious, probably astounded to find himself so close to the only thing in all the forest that he feared and would have preferred to flee from.

Under such conditions boars lose their heads; there was a sudden clatter of tusks, a muffled, indescribable sound, half squeal, half roar; a fountain of feathery snow, and two shots close together.  Then a third shot.

Rosalie, rather pale, threw another cartridge in as Delancy picked himself out of a snow-bank and looked around him in astonishment.

“Well done, young lady!” cried Kemp, running a fistful of snow over the blade of his hunting-knife and nodding his admiration.  “I guess it’s just as well you disobeyed orders and let this funny pig have what was coming to him.  Y’ ain’t hurt, are ye, Mr. Grandcourt?”

“No; he didn’t hit me; I tripped on that root.  Did I miss him?”

“Not at all,” said Duane, kneeling down while Miller lifted the great fierce head.  “You hit him all right, but it didn’t stop him; it only turned him.  Here’s your second bullet, too; and Rosalie, yours did the business for him.  Good for you!  It’s fine, isn’t it, Geraldine?”

Grandcourt, flushing heavily, turned to Rosalie and held out his hand.  “Thank you,” he said; “the brute was right on top of me.”

“Oh, no,” she said honestly, “he’d missed you and was going straight on.  I don’t know how on earth I ever hit him, but I was so frightened to see you go over backward and I thought that he’d knocked you down, and I was perfectly furious——­”