made me guffaw
with sheer excitement."

"Well, I think he was left-handed, because the footmarks were going
ashore on the right-hand side of the keel-marks, and going seawards on
the left-hand side. Jump out of a boat and push it out to sea, and
notice which side of the boat you stand by instinct--provided you were
doing as he was, pushing on the point of the bows. The fact that his
feet obliterate the keel-marks in one place proves that. So now we
want to find a left-handed man in sea-boots who knew Sholto was
blind"--and he laughed in a half-apology.

"What about these sea-boots," I asked, "and the place we are to find
where he left them?"

"We'll look for that now; and if we find it we can be pretty sure our
mariner stole the dog."

"You seem to be taking it for granted already," I pointed out.

"The easiest way to prove he didn't is to satisfy ourselves that
there's no evidence he did," said the oculist. "But I fancy he did."

"From the way you've sized it up so far I should be inclined to back
your fancy," I admitted frankly. "I take it, from your diagnosis, that
our nautical friend came ashore here, went up on to the cliff, and
glued his eye to the dining-room window. When he saw we were at
dinner, and it was getting dusk--in fact, almost dark--he took off his
sea-boots and slipped up to the Lodge in his stocking-soles. So if we
climb the cliff, we expect to find the spot on which he deposited his
boots."

"If we expected that," Garnesk replied, "we should also expect to find
his boots; and he wouldn't be likely to leave such incriminating
evidence in our hands as that. No, my dear Ewart; when he left the
cliff he was wearing his boots, and he left them at some point on the
path between the house and his embarking place. Come--let's look."

I was intensely interested in my friend's deductions, and I felt
convinced that he was right. So we climbed the cliff, he by one route
and I by another, in order to see if we could find any traces of last
night's visitor. But that was impossible; the rocks were too
storm-swept to harbour any sort of lichen which would have shown
evidence of footmarks. Still, we were not disappointed when we reached
the top, and Garnesk looked at me with a charming expression of boyish
triumph when we came across a patch of ground where the heather had
obviously been trampled about and worn down by someone recently lying
there.

"I don't think we'll worry about tracing him from here