about three o'clock
I rode by Gaston Cheverny 's side , and privately resolved to remain there . We talked together and I found him more like the old Gaston than I had yet seen him . This foolhardy expedition was exactly like Gaston ; but when I saw the quickness of his eye , and the alertness of his movements , I concluded he could take care of himself better than any of us supposed . It was about three o'clock when we got to the circle in which the beaters had surrounded the old boar . He had been hunted twice that season and had escaped both times . Huntsmen are very superstitious , and they had got the notion that if this boar were not killed in the third chase , there was something unearthly about him . This was fostered by some laughing remark of Count Saxe about the hunt of Thibaut of Champagne , and the `` solitary '' being the ghost of a boar .