“A little while ago,” he went on, “I was up in the branches of a tree over yonder, and I caught a glimpse of a lady in a light dress and a white hat and I thought it might be the same.  She wore a dress like that and a white hat with roses when she drove by the inn.  I am very anxious to see her again.”

“You seem to be!”

“And haven’t you seen her?  Hasn’t she passed this way?”

He urged the question with the same strange eagerness which had marked his manner from the first, a manner which confounded me by its absurd resemblance to that of a boy who had not mixed with other boys and had never been teased.  And yet his expression was intelligent and alert; nor was there anything abnormal or “queer” in his good-humoured gaze.

“I think that I may have seen her,” I began slowly; “but if you do not know her I should not advise—­”

I was interrupted by a shout and the sound of a large body plunging in the thicket.  At this the face of “that other monsieur” flushed slightly; he smiled, but seemed troubled.

“That is a friend of mine,” he said.  “I am afraid he will want me to go back with him.”  And he raised an answering shout.

Professor Keredec floundered out through the last row of saplings and bushes, his beard embellished with a broken twig, his big face red and perspiring.  He was a fine, a mighty man, ponderous of shoulder, monumental of height, stupendous of girth; there was cloth enough in the hot-looking black frock-coat he wore for the canopy of a small pavilion.  Half a dozen books were under his arm, and in his hand he carried a hat which evidently belonged to “that other monsieur,” for his own was on his head.

One glance of scrutiny and recognition he shot at me from his silver-rimmed spectacles; and seized the young man by the arm.

“Ha, my friend!” he exclaimed in a bass voice of astounding power and depth, “that is one way to study botany:  to jump out of the middle of a high tree and to run like a crazy man!” He spoke with a strong accent and a thunderous rolling of the “r.”  “What was I to think?” he demanded.  “What has arrived to you?”

“I saw a lady I wished to follow,” the other answered promptly.

“A lady!  What lady?”

“The lady who passed the inn three days ago.  I spoke of her then, you remember.”

“Tonnerre de Dieu!” Keredec slapped his thigh with the sudden violence of a man who remembers that he has forgotten something, and as a final addition to my amazement, his voice rang more of remorse than of reproach.  “Have I never told you that to follow strange ladies is one of the things you cannot do?”

“That other monsieur” shook his head.  “No, you have never told me that.  I do not understand it,” he said, adding irrelevantly, “I believe this gentleman knows her.  He says he thinks he has seen her.”

“If you please, we must not trouble this gentleman about it,” said the professor hastily.  “Put on your hat, in the name of a thousand saints, and let us go!”