ions which I had to ask.

"Come to the point, m'sieu," he said, dryly. "We have struck
palms."

Spite of my training, spite of the caution which experience brings to
the most unsuspicious of us, I had a curious confidence in this
tattered rascal's loyalty to a promise. And apparently without reason,
too, for there was something wrong with his eyes--or else with the way
he used them. They were wonderful, vivid blue eyes, well set and well
shaped, but he never looked at anybody directly except in moments of
excitement or fury. At such moments his eyes appeared to be lighted up
from behind.

"Lizard," I said, "you are a poacher."

His placid visage turned stormy.

"None of that, m'sieu," he retorted; "remember the bargain! Concern
yourself with your own affairs!"

"Wait," I said. "I'm not trying to reform you. For my purposes it is
a poacher I want--else I might have gone to another."

"That sounds more reasonable," he admitted, guardedly.

"I want to ask this," I continued: "are you a poacher from
necessity, or from that pure love of the chase which is born in even
worse men than you and I?"

"I poach because I love it. There are no poachers from necessity;
there is always the sea, which furnishes work for all who care to
steer a sloop, or draw a seine, or wield a sea-rake. I am a pilot."

"But the war?"

"At least the war could not keep me from the sardine grounds."

"So you poach from choice?"

"Yes. It is in me. I am sorry, but what shall I do? _It's in me_."

"And you can't resist?"

He laughed grimly. "Go and call in the hounds from the stag's
throat!"

Presently I said:

"You have been in jail?"

"Yes," he replied, indifferently.

"For poaching?"

"Eur e'harvik rous," he said in Breton, and I could not make out
whether he meant that he had been in jail for the sake of a woman or
of a "little red doe." The Breton language bristles with double
meanings, symbols, and allegories. The word for doe in Breton is
_karvez_; or for a doe which never had a fawn, it is _heiez_; for a
fawn the word is _karvik_.

I mentioned these facts to him, but he only looked dangerous and
remained silent.

"Lizard," I said, "give me your confidence as I give you mine. I
will tell you now that I was once in the police--"

He started.

"And that I expect to enter that corps again. And I want your aid."

"My aid? For the police?" His laugh was simply horrible. "I? The
Lizard? Continue, m'sieu."

"I will tel