ce-halfpenny a night, and I can manage that."

"How long will it take you to get there?" enquired the old woman,
immensely impressed by Bouzille's venturesome plan.

"That depends," said the tramp. "I must allow quite three months with my
train. Of course if I got run in on the way for stealing, or as a rogue
and vagabond, I couldn't say how long it would take."

The meal was over, and the old woman was quietly washing up her few
plates and dishes, when Bouzille, who had gone down to the river to
fetch the rushes, suddenly called shrilly to mother Chiquard.

"Mother Chiquard! Mother Chiquard! Come and look! Just fancy, I've
earned twenty-five francs!"

The summons was so urgent, and the news so amazing, that the old lady
left her house and hurried across the road to the river bank. She saw
the tramp up to his waist in the water, trying, with a long stick, to
drag out of the current a large object which was not identifiable at a
first glance. To all her enquiries Bouzille answered with the same
delighted cry, "I have earned twenty-five francs," too intent on
bringing his fishing job to a successful issue even to turn round. A few
minutes later he emerged dripping from the water, towing a large bundle
to the safety of the bank. Mother Chiquard drew nearer, greatly
interested, and then recoiled with a shriek of horror.

Bouzille had fished out a corpse!

It was a ghastly sight: the body of a very young man, almost a boy, with
long, slender limbs; the face was so horribly swollen and torn as to be
shapeless. One leg was almost entirely torn from the trunk. Through
rents in the clothing strips of flesh were trailing, blue and
discoloured by their long immersion in the water. On the shoulders and
back of the neck were bruises and stains of blood. Bouzille, who was
quite unaffected by the ghastliness of the object and still kept up his
gay chant "I have fished up a body, I've earned twenty-five francs,"
observed that there were large splinters of wood, rotten from long
immersion, sticking in some of the wounds. He stood up and addressed
mother Chiquard who, white as a sheet, was watching him in silence.

"I see what it is: he must have got caught in some mill wheel: that's
what has cut him up like that."

Mother Chiquard shook her head uneasily.

"Suppose it was a murder! That would be an ugly business!"

"It's no good my looking at him any more," said Bouzille. "I don't
recognise him; he's not from the country."