Suddenly the keeper gave a short exclamation of astonishment and threw up his rifle.

There was another bear behind Paul, shambling toward him, unseen by him.

All his attention was riveted on the huge brute forty yards in front of him. It was Claude de Chauxville's task to protect Paul from any flank or rear attack; and Claude de Chauxville was peering over his covert, watching with blanched face the second bear; and lifting no hand, making no sign. The bear was within a few yards of Paul, who was crouching behind the fallen pine and now raising his rifle to his shoulder.

In a flash of comprehension the two girls saw all, through the panes of the closed window. It was still singularly like a scene on the stage.

The second bear raised his powerful fore-paws as he approached. One blow would tear open Paul's brain.

A terrific report sent the girls staggering back, for a moment paralyzing thought. The keeper had fired through the window, both barrels almost simultaneously. It was a question how much lead would bring the bear down before he covered the intervening dozen yards. In the confined space of the hut, the report of the heavy double charge was like that of a cannon; moreover, Steinmetz, twenty yards away, had fired at the same moment.

The room was filled with smoke. The two girls were blinded for an instant. Then they saw the keeper tear open the door and disappear. The cold air through the shattered casement was a sudden relief to their lungs, choked with sulphur and the fumes of spent powder.

In a flash they were out of the open door; and there again, with the suddenness of a panorama, they saw another picture--Paul kneeling in the middle of the clearing, taking careful aim at the retreating form of the first bear. They saw the puff of blue smoke rise from his rifle, they heard the sharp report; and the bear rolled over on its face.

Steinmetz and the keeper were walking toward Paul. Claude de Chauxville, standing outside his screen of brushwood, was staring with wide, fear-stricken eyes at the hut which he had thought empty. He did not know that there were three people behind him, watching him. What had they seen? What had they understood?

Catrina and Maggie ran toward Paul. They were on snow-shoes, and made short work of the intervening distance.

Paul had risen to his feet. His face was grave. There was a singular gleam in his eyes, which was not a gleam of mere excitement such as the chase brings into some men's eyes.

Steinmetz looked at him and said nothing. For a moment Paul stood still.

He looked round him, noting with experienced glance the lay of the whole incident--the dead form of the bear ten yards behind his late hiding-place, one hundred and eighty yards from the hut, one hundred and sixty yards from the spot whence Karl Steinmetz had sent his unerring bullet through the bear's brain. Paul saw it all. He measured the distances. He looked at De Chauxville, standing white-faced at his post, not fifty yards from the carcass of the second bear.

Paul seemed to see no one but De Chauxville. He went straight toward him, and the whole party followed in breathless suspense. Steinmetz was nearest to him, watching with his keen, quiet eyes.

Paul went up to De Chauxville and took the rifle from his hands. He opened the breech and looked into the barrels. They were clean; the rifle had not been fired off.

He gave a little laugh of contempt, and, throwing the rifle at De Chauxville's feet, turned abruptly away.

It was Catrina who spoke.

"If you had killed him," she said, "I would have killed you!"

Steinmetz picked up the rifle, closed the breech, and handed it to De Chauxville with a queer smile.

CHAPTER XXXII

A CLOUD

When the Osterno party reached home that same evening the starosta was waiting to see Steinmetz. His news was such that Steinmetz sent for Paul, and the three men went together to the little room beyond the smoking-room in the old part of the castle.

"Well?" said Paul, with the unconscious hauteur which made him a prince to these people.

The starosta spread out his hands.

"Your Excellency," he answered, "I am afraid."

"Of what?"

The starosta shrugged his narrow shoulders in cringing deprecation.

"Excellency, I do not know. There is something in the village--something in the whole country. I know not what it is. It is a feeling--one cannot see it, one cannot define it; but it is there, like the gleam of water at the bottom of a deep well. The moujiks are getting dangerous. They will not speak to me. I am suspected. I am watched."

His shifty eyes, like black beads, flitted from side to side as he spoke. He was like a weasel at bay. It was the face of a man who went in bodily fear.

"I will go with you down to the village now," said Paul. "Is there any excuse--any illness?"

"Ah, Excellency," replied the chief, "there is always that excuse."

Paul looked at the clock.

"I will go now," he said. He began his simple preparations at once.

"There is dinner to be thought of," suggested Steinmetz, with a resigned smile. "It is half-past seven."

"Dinner can wait," replied Paul in English. "You might tell the ladies that I have gone out, and will dine alone when I come back."

Steinmetz shrugged his broad shoulders.

"I think you are a fool," he said, "to go alone. If they discover your identity they will tear you to pieces."

"I am not afraid of them," replied Paul, with his head in the medicine cupboard, "any more than I am afraid of a horse. They are like horses; they do not know their own strength."

"With this difference," added Steinmetz, "that the moujik will one day make the discovery. He is beginning to make it now. The starosta is quite right, Paul. There is something in the air. It is about time that you took the ladies away from here and left me to manage it alone."

"That time will never come again," answered Paul. "I am not going to leave you alone again."

He was pushing his arms into the sleeves of the old brown coat reaching to his heels, a garment which commanded as much love and respect in Osterno as ever would an angel's wing.

Steinmetz opened the drawer of his bureau and laid a revolver on the table.

"At all events," he said, "you may as well have the wherewithal to make a fight of it, if the worst comes to the worst."

"As you like," answered Paul, slipping the fire-arm into his pocket.

The starosta moved away a pace or two. He was essentially a man of peace.

Half an hour later it became known in the village that the Moscow doctor was in the house of one Ivan Krass, where he was prepared to see all patients who were now suffering from infectious complaints. The door of this cottage was soon besieged by the sick and the idle, while the starosta stood in the door-way and kept order.

Within, in the one dwelling-room of the cottage, were assembled as picturesque and as unsavory a group as the most enthusiastic modern "slummer" could desire to see.

Paul, standing by the table with two paraffin lamps placed behind him, saw each suppliant in turn, and all the while he kept up a running conversation with the more intelligent, some of whom lingered on to talk and watch.

"Ah, John the son of John," he would say, "what is the matter with you?

It is not often I see you. I thought you were clean and thrifty."