early in the morning, on foot, with his face very much
disguised and his bag at the end of a stick on his shoulder, like an
apprentice doing his round of France. He walked straight to Duclair,
where he lunched. On leaving this town, he followed the Seine and
practically did not lose sight of it again. His instinct, strengthened,
moreover, by numerous influences, always brought him back to the
sinuous banks of the stately river. When the Chateau du Malaquis was
robbed, the objects stolen from Baron Cahorn's collection were sent by
way of the Seine. The old carvings removed from the chapel at Ambrumesy
were carried to the Seine bank. He pictured the whole fleet of pinnaces
performing a regular service between Rouen and the Havre and draining
the works of art and treasures from a countryside to dispatch them
thence to the land of millionaires.

"I'm burning! I'm burning!" muttered the boy, gasping under the truth,
which came to him in a mighty series of shocks and took away his breath.

The checks encountered on the first few days, did not discourage him.
He had a firm and profound belief in the correctness of the supposition
that was guiding him. It was bold, perhaps, and extravagant; no matter:
it was worthy of the adversary pursued. The supposition was on a level
with the prodigious reality that bore the name of Lupin. With a man
like that, of what good could it be to look elsewhere than in the
domain of the enormous, the exaggerated, the superhuman?

Jumieges, the Mailleraye, Saint-Wandrille, Caudebec, Tancarville,
Quillebeuf were places filled with his memories. How often he must have
contemplated the glory of their Gothic steeples or the splendor of
their immense ruins!

But the Havre, the neighborhood of the Havre drew Isidore like a
beacon-fire.

"The kings of France carry secrets that often decide the fate of towns!"

Cryptic words which, suddenly, for Beautrelet, shone bright with
clearness! Was this not an exact statement of the reasons that
determined Francis I. to create a town on this spot and was not the
fate of the Havre-de-Grace linked with the very secret of the Needle?

"That's it, that's it," stammered Beautrelet, excitedly. "The old
Norman estuary, one of the essential points, one of the original
centres around which our French nationality was formed, is completed by
those two forces, one in full view, alive, known to all, the new port
commanding the ocean and opening on the world; the other di