WHERE WE AGAIN MEET THE TREE WITH THE ZINC PATCH. Some time after the events which we have just recorded, the Sieur Boulatruelle had a lively emotion. The Sieur Boulatruelle is the road-mender of Montfermeil of whom we have already caught a glimpse in the dark portions of this book. Boulatruelle, it will possibly be remembered, was a man occupied with troubled and various things. He broke stones and plundered travellers on the highway. Road-mender and robber, he had a dream: he believed in the treasures buried in the forest of Montfermeil. He hoped some day to find money in the ground at the foot of a tree, and in the mean while willingly fished for it in the pockets of passers-by. Still, for the present he was prudent, for he had just had a narrow escape. He was, as we know, picked up with the other ruffians in Jondrette's garret. There is some usefulness in a vice, for his drunkenness saved him, and it never could be cleared up whether he were there as a robber or as a robbed man. He was set at liberty on account of his proved intoxication on the night of the attack, and returned to the woods. He went back to his road from Gagny to Lagny, to break stones for the State, under surveillance, with hanging head and very thoughtful, slightly chilled by the robbery which had almost ruined him, but turning with all the more tenderness to the wine which had saved him. As for the lively emotion which he had a short time after his return beneath the turf-roof of his road-mender's cabin, it was this: One morning Boulatruelle, while going as usual to work and to his lurking-place, possibly a little before daybreak, perceived among the branches a man whose back he could alone see, but whose shape, so he fancied, through the mist and darkness, was not entirely unknown to him. Boulatruelle, though a drunkard, had a correct and lucid memory, an indispensable defensive weapon for any man who is at all on bad terms with legal order. "Where the devil have I seen some one like that man?" he asked. But he could give himself no reply, save that he resembled somebody of whom he had a confused recollection. Boulatruelle, however, made his comparisons and calculations, though he was unable to settle the identity. This man did not belong to those parts, and bad come there evidently afoot, as no public vehicle passed through Montfermeil at that hour. He must have been walking all night Where did he come from? No great distance, for he had neither haversack nor bundle. Doubtless from Paris. Why was he in this wood? Why was lie there at such an hour? What did he want there? Boulatruelle thought of the treasure. By dint of racking his memory he vaguely remembered having had, several years previously, a similar alarm on the subject of a man who might very well be this man. While meditating he had, under the very weight of his meditation, hung his head, a natural but not clever thing. When he raised it again the man had disappeared in the forest and the mist.