?"

"My dear Sir Caesar--" Mr. Fossel stepped forward solicitously.

"Eh? So it is.... Good evening, Mr. Fossell! That picture of the
Waterloo Banquet seemed familiar, somehow." The Lord Proprietor nodded
towards a framed engraving on the wall. "Yes, to be sure--and
Landseer's 'Twa Dogs.' But this is worse than the Arabian Nights! We
must have missed the harbour by miles!"

"You came ashore at Cam Point, most probably," Mr. Fossell suggested.
"The tide sets that way, and from Cam Point it is but a step."

"A step, is it? Man, I've been wandering in blank darkness for a full
hour. Twice I've found myself on the edge of a cliff. I've followed
walls only to be led into open fields. I've struck across open fields,
only to tumble against troughs, midden heaps, pig-styes. I walked
straight up against this house, supposing myself somewhere near the
batteries on Garrison Hill--though how I had managed to miss the town
was more than I could explain."

"The wonder is you ever fetched across from Inniscaw."

"It's my belief we had never done it, but for the tide. The night was
black as your hat when we started, but fairly clear. We kept sight of
the lamp on the pier-head until half-way across. Then the fog came
down; and then----!"

"Well, it's good hard causeway between this and St. Hugh's," said Mr.
Rogers. "We can't miss it. Afterwards.... However, you'll step along
with me to the Guard-house, Sir Caesar, and as soon as the weather lifts
at all one of my men shall put you back to Inniscaw."

"On the contrary, my good sir, I go with you."

Mr. Rogers looked at him, as he buttoned up his pea-jacket.

"We won't argue it here," he said. "You don't guess what it means,
though, searching for a wreck among the Off Islands on a night like
this. Not to mention that there's a sea running...."

And yet, apart from the fog, there was nothing in the weather to
suggest shipwreck and horrors. For a fortnight the Islands had lain
steeped in the sunshine of Indian summer; a fortnight of still starry
nights and days almost without a cloud. As a rule, such weather breaks
up in a gale, of which the glass gives timely warning. But the mercury
in Mr. Fossell's barometer indicated no depression--or the merest
trifle. The drenched night air was warm: to Miss Gabriel, inhaling it
in the passage by the drawing-room door, it seemed to be laden with the
scents of summer, and Miss Gabriel had not lived all her life in
Garland Town without lear