he told him, with
some irritation, of the ill-success of his servant; he accused the
man of stupidity, and wished fervently that he were able to go
himself.

Partly to soothe him, the doctor promised that he would undertake
the search for Hepburn, and he engaged faithfully to follow all
Kinraid's eager directions; not to be satisfied with men's careless
words, but to look over muster-rolls and ships' books.

He, too, brought the same answer, however unwillingly given.

He had set out upon the search so confident of success, that he felt
doubly discomfited by failure. However, he had persuaded himself
that the lieutenant had been partially delirious from the effects of
his wound, and the power of the sun shining down just where he lay.
There had, indeed, been slight symptoms of Kinraid's having received
a sun-stroke; and the doctor dwelt largely on these in his endeavour
to persuade his patient that it was his imagination which had endued
a stranger with the lineaments of some former friend.

Kinraid threw his arms out of bed with impatience at all this
plausible talk, which was even more irritating than the fact that
Hepburn was still undiscovered.

'The man was no friend of mine; I was like to have killed him when
last I saw him. He was a shopkeeper in a country town in England. I
had seen little enough of him; but enough to make me able to swear
to him anywhere, even in a marine's uniform, and in this sweltering
country.'

'Faces once seen, especially in excitement, are apt to return upon
the memory in cases of fever,' quoth the doctor, sententiously.

The attendant sailor, reinstalled to some complacency by the failure
of another in the search in which he himself had been unsuccessful,
now put in his explanation.

'Maybe it was a spirit. It's not th' first time as I've heared of a
spirit coming upon earth to save a man's life i' time o' need. My
father had an uncle, a west-country grazier. He was a-coming over
Dartmoor in Devonshire one moonlight night with a power o' money as
he'd got for his sheep at t' fair. It were stowed i' leather bags
under th' seat o' th' gig. It were a rough kind o' road, both as a
road and in character, for there'd been many robberies there of
late, and th' great rocks stood convenient for hiding-places. All at
once father's uncle feels as if some one were sitting beside him on
th' empty seat; and he turns his head and looks, and there he sees
his brother sitting--his brother as