On the morning after their arrival at Viteau, Louis, who was gladly wandering all about the house and grounds, went into a little room on the lower floor which was opposite the sleeping apartment of the squire Bernard. Here, by the light of a small window near the ceiling, he saw, upon a perch in one corner of the room, a falcon, secured by a string which was tied to its leg. Louis threw the door wide open in order to get a better light, and narrowly examined the bird.
"Why, Bernard!" he cried to the squire, who just then entered the room, "this looks exactly like the falcon I took from this very perch the morning of the day I first went to De Barran's castle."
"Of course it looks like it," said the squire, "for it is the same falcon."
"The same falcon!" exclaimed Louis. "And on the same perch! Why, that is a miracle!"
"It is no miracle at all," answered Bernard; "it is a very simple thing when you come to know all about it. After the rascally _cotereaux_ had been driven out of this place, I found the falcon fastened to this perch, and, by marks I had filed upon his beak, I knew him for the same bird I had trained for your brother Raymond. Of course, I was astonished; but, on thinking the matter over, I supposed that this must be the bird which the robbers had stolen from you, and that, bringing it with them when they came here to live,—the rascally scoundrels!—they naturally put it in this room, which they could see had been planned and fitted for the keeping of falcons. Looking into the matter still further, I asked Orion, the chief falconer of Count Hugo, who was one of the men he had brought here with him, what kind of bird it was he had given to you when the Count desired that you should have one. Orion then told me it was a falcon which had come to him only the day before. He had been out hawking with his master, and was bringing down to him by means of a lure a falcon that had made an unsuccessful flight, when a strange hawk made its appearance and also answered his call, and came down to the lure. Knowing it to be a falcon which had been lost by some hunter, and to be a well-trained bird, he seized and hooded it and took it home with him. The next day, when he was ordered to give a bird to a boy, he much preferred to part with this one, which he had just found, to giving away any of the falcons he had reared and trained himself. And this is the whole of the matter."