d just arrived there. On foot,
evidently. No public conveyance passes through Montfermeil at that hour.
He had walked all night. Whence came he? Not from a very great distance;
for he had neither haversack, nor bundle. From Paris, no doubt. Why was
he in these woods? why was he there at such an hour? what had he come
there for?

Boulatruelle thought of the treasure. By dint of ransacking his memory,
he recalled in a vague way that he had already, many years before, had
a similar alarm in connection with a man who produced on him the effect
that he might well be this very individual.

"By the deuce," said Boulatruelle, "I'll find him again. I'll discover
the parish of that parishioner. This prowler of Patron-Minette has a
reason, and I'll know it. People can't have secrets in my forest if I
don't have a finger in the pie."

He took his pick-axe which was very sharply pointed.

"There now," he grumbled, "is something that will search the earth and a
man."

And, as one knots one thread to another thread, he took up the line of
march at his best pace in the direction which the man must follow, and
set out across the thickets.

When he had compassed a hundred strides, the day, which was already
beginning to break, came to his assistance. Footprints stamped in the
sand, weeds trodden down here and there, heather crushed, young branches
in the brushwood bent and in the act of straightening themselves up
again with the graceful deliberation of the arms of a pretty woman who
stretches herself when she wakes, pointed out to him a sort of track. He
followed it, then lost it. Time was flying. He plunged deeper into the
woods and came to a sort of eminence. An early huntsman who was passing
in the distance along a path, whistling the air of Guillery, suggested
to him the idea of climbing a tree. Old as he was, he was agile. There
stood close at hand a beech-tree of great size, worthy of Tityrus and of
Boulatruelle. Boulatruelle ascended the beech as high as he was able.

The idea was a good one. On scrutinizing the solitary waste on the side
where the forest is thoroughly entangled and wild, Boulatruelle suddenly
caught sight of his man.

Hardly had he got his eye upon him when he lost sight of him.

The man entered, or rather, glided into, an open glade, at a
considerable distance, masked by large trees, but with which
Boulatruelle was perfectly familiar, on account of having noticed, near
a large pile of porous stones,