l you why. Yesterday, on a visit to Point Paradise, I saw
a man lying belly down in the bracken; but I didn't let him know I saw
him. I have served in the police; I think I recognize that man. He is
known in Belleville as Tric-Trac. He came here, I believe, to see a
man called Buckhurst. Can you find this Tric-Trac for me? Do you,
perhaps, know him?"

"Yes," said the Lizard, "I knew him in prison."

"You have seen him here?"

"Yes, but I will not betray him."

"Why?"

"Because he is a poor, hunted devil of a poacher like me!" cried the
Lizard, angrily. "He must live; there's enough land in Finistere for
us both."

"How long has he been here in Paradise?"

"For two months."

"And he told you he lived by poaching?"

"Yes."

"He lies."

The Lizard looked at me intently.

"He has played you; he is a thief, and he has come here to rob. He is
a filou--a town rat. Can he bend a hedge-snare? Can he line a string
of dead-falls? Can he even snare enough game to keep himself from
starving? He a woodsman? _He_ a poacher of the bracken? You are
simple, my friend."

The veins in the poacher's neck began to swell and a dull color
flooded his face.

"Prove that he has played me," he said.

"Prove it yourself."

"How?"

"By watching him. He came here to meet a man named Buckhurst."

"I have seen that man Buckhurst, too. What is he doing here?" asked
the Lizard.

"That is what I want you to find out and help me to find out!" I
said. "Voila! Now you know what I want of you."

The sombre visage of the poacher twitched.

"I take it," said I, "that you would not make a comrade of a petty
pickpocket."

The poacher uttered an oath and shook his fist at me. "Bon sang!" he
snarled, "I am an honest man if I am a poacher!"

"That's the reason I trusted you," said I, good-humoredly. "Take
your fists down, my friend, and think out a plan which will permit me
to observe this Monsieur Tric-Trac at my leisure, without I myself
being observed."

"That is easy," he said. "I take him food to-day."

"Then I was right," said I, laughing. "He is a Belleville rat, who
cannot feed himself where there are no pockets to pick. Does he know a
languste from a linnet? Not he, my friend!"

The Lizard sat still, head bent, knees drawn up, apparently buried in
thought. There is no injury one can do a Breton of his class like the
injury of deceiving and mocking.

If Tric-Trac, a man of the city, had come here to profit by the
ign