of ghosts, I s'pose," growled one.

"No more than yourself, John Drillot. But we've wasted a day on this
same fooling, and the man's not here; and for me, I doubt if he's ever
been here."

"And what of the things we found in the shelter?" said Drillot. "Think
they came there of themselves?"

"I don't care how they came there. It's not old cloaks and blankets we
came after. Maybe he has been here. I don't know. But he's not here now,
and I've had enough of it."

"B'en! I'm not afraid to stop all night--if anyone'll stop with me"--and
if no one had offered he would have been just as well pleased. "Don't
know as I'd care to stop all alone."

"Frightened of ghosts, maybe," scoffed the other.

"You stop with me, Tom Guille, and we'll see which is frightenedest of
ghosts, you or me."

But Tom Guille believed in ghosts as devoutly as any old woman in Sark,
and he was bound for home, no matter what the rest chose to do.

"There's not a foot of the rock we haven't searched," said he, "and the
man's not here; so what's the use of waiting all night?"

"Because if he's in hiding it's at night he'll come out."

"Come out of where?"

"Wherever he's got to."

"That's Guernsey, most likely. His friends have arranged to lift him off
here first chance that came; and it came before we did, and you'll not
see him in these parts again, I warrant you."

"I'll wait with you, John, if you're set on it, though I doubt Tom's
right, and the man's gone," said Peter Vaudin of La Ville. And John
Drillot found himself bound to the adventure.

"Do we keep the boat?" asked Vaudin.

"No ... for then one of us must sit in her all night, or she will bump
herself to pieces. You will come back for us in the morning, Philip."

"I'll come," said Philip Guille, and presently they stood watching the
boats pulling lustily homewards, and devoutly wishing they were in them.

Every foot of the rock, as they knew it, had already been carefully
raked over. The possible hiding-places were few. But no one knows better
than a Sark man what rocks can do in the way of slits and tunnels and
caves, and it was just this possibility that had set John Drillot to his
unwonted, and none too welcome, task. The murderer--as he deemed
Gard--might have found some place unknown to any of them, and might be
lying quietly waiting for them to go. If that was so, he must come out
sooner or later, and the chances were that he would steal out in the
night.

So the t