se you remember it?"

M. Pougeot thought a moment--he prided himself on remembering everything.
"Down near Saumur, wasn't it?"

"Exactly. And it was near Saumur I found him after searching all over
France. We were clean off the track, and I made up my mind the only way to
get him was through his wife and child. They lived in a little house in the
woods not far from the place of the shooting. I went there as a peddler in
hard luck, and I played my part so well that the woman consented to take me
in as a boarder."

"Wonderful man!" exclaimed the commissary.

"For weeks it was a waiting game. I would go away on a peddling tour and
then come back as boarder. Nothing developed, but I could not get rid of
the feeling that my man was somewhere near in the woods."

"One of your intuitions. Well?"

"Well, at last the woman became convinced that they had _nothing to fear
from me_, and she did things more openly. One day I saw her put some food
in a basket and give it to the little girl. And the little girl went off
with the basket into the forest. Then I knew I was right, and the next day
I followed the little girl, and, sure enough, she led me to a rough cave
where her father was hiding. I hung about there for an hour or two, and
finally the man came out from the cave and I saw him talk to his wife and
child near a bridge over a mountain torrent."

"The picture that girl saw in the dream!"

"Yes; I'll never forget it. I had my pistol ready and he was defenseless;
and once I was just springing forward to take the fellow when he bent over
and kissed his little girl. I don't know how you look at these things,
Pougeot, but I couldn't break in there and take that man away from his wife
and child. The woman had been kind to me and trusted me, and--well, it was
a breach of duty and they punished me for it; but I couldn't do it, I
_couldn't_ do it, and I didn't do it."

"And you let the fellow go?"

"I let him go _then_, but I got him a week later in a fair fight, man to
man. They gave him ten years."

"And discharged you from the force?"

"Yes. That is, in view of my past services, they _allowed_ me to resign."
Coquenil spoke bitterly.

"Outrageous! Unbelievable!" muttered Pougeot. "No doubt you were
technically in the wrong, but it was a slight offense, and, after all, you
got your man. A reprimand at the most, _at the most_, was called for, and
_not_ with you, not with Paul Coquenil."

The commissary spoke with deepe