t in motion for the
discovery and arrest of Charles Rambert.

* * * * *

With a mighty clatter and racket Bouzille came down the slope and
stopped before old mother Chiquard's cottage. He arrived in his own
equipage, and an extraordinary one it was!

Bouzille was mounted upon a tricycle of prehistoric design, with two
large wheels behind and a small steering wheel in front, and a rusty
handle-bar from which all the plating was worn off. The solid rubber
tyres which once had adorned the machine had worn out long ago, and were
now replaced by twine twisted round the felloes of the wheels; this was
for ever fraying away and the wheels were fringed with a veritable
lace-work of string. Bouzille must have picked up this impossible
machine for an old song at some local market, unless perhaps some
charitable person gave it to him simply to get rid of it. He styled this
tricycle his "engine," and it was by no means the whole of his equipage.
Attached to the tricycle by a stout rope was a kind of wicker
perambulator on four wheels, which he called his "sleeping-car," because
he stored away in it all the bits of rag he picked up on his journeys,
and also his very primitive bedding and the little piece of waterproof
canvas under which he often slept in the open air. Behind the
sleeping-car was a third vehicle, the restaurant-car, consisting of an
old soap box mounted on four solid wooden wheels, which were fastened to
the axles by huge conical bolts; in this he kept his provisions; lumps
of bread and fat, bottles and vegetables, all mixed up in agreeable
confusion. Bouzille made quite long journeys in this train of his, and
was well known throughout the south-west of France. Often did the
astonished population see him bent over his tricycle, with his pack on
his back, pedalling with extraordinary rapidity down the hills, while
the carriages behind him bumped and jumped over the inequalities in the
surface of the road until it seemed impossible that they could retain
their equilibrium.

Old mother Chiquard had recognised the cause of the racket. The healthy
life of the country had kept the old woman strong and active in spite of
the eighty-three years that had passed over her head, and now she came
to her door, armed with a broom, and hailed the tramp in angry,
threatening tones.

"So it's you, is it, you thief, you robber of the poor! It's shocking,
the way you spend your time in evil doing! Wh