nt and then made up her mind.

"It's a go," she said, putting her horny fingers into the man's hard
palm. "You shall chop me some wood first, and then go down to the river
for the rushes I have put in to soak; they must be well swollen by this
time."

Bouzille was glad to have made it up with mother Chiquard, and pleased
at the prospect of a good dinner at midday; he opened the cottage door,
and leisurely arranged a few logs within range of the axe with which he
was going to split them; mother Chiquard began to throw down some grain
to the skinny and famished fowls that fluttered round her.

"I thought you were in prison, Bouzille," she said, "over stealing my
rabbit, and also over that affair at the chateau of Beaulieu."

"Oh, those are two quite different stories," Bouzille replied. "You
mustn't mix them up together on any account. As for the chateau job,
every tramp in the district has been run in: I was copped by M'sieu
Morand the morning after the murder; he took me into the kitchen of the
chateau and Mme. Louise gave me something to eat. There was another chap
there with me, a man named Francois Paul who doesn't belong to these
parts; between you and me, I thought he was an evil-looking customer who
might easily have been the murderer, but it doesn't do to say that sort
of thing, and I'm glad I held my tongue because they let him go. I heard
no more about it, and five days later I went back to Brives to attend
the funeral of the Marquise de Langrune. That was a ceremony if you
like! The church all lighted up, and all the nobility from the
neighbourhood present. I didn't lose my time, for I knew all the
gentlemen and ladies and took the best part of sixteen shillings, and
the blind beggar who sits on the steps of the church called me all the
names he could put his tongue to!"

The tramp's story interested mother Chiquard mightily, but her former
idea still dominated her mind.

"So they didn't punish you for stealing my rabbit?"

"Well, they did and they didn't," said Bouzille, scratching his head.
"M'sieu Morand, who is an old friend of mine, took me to the lock-up at
Saint-Jaury, and I was to have gone next morning to the court at Brives,
where I know the sentence for stealing domestic animals is three weeks.
That would have suited me all right just now, for the prison at Brives
is quite new and very comfortable, but that same night Sergeant Doucet
shoved another man into the clink with, me at Saint-Jaury,