if you can interpret character?"

So certain was Hilda Wade of her conclusions, indeed, that Mrs. Mallet
begged me next day to take my holiday at once--which I could easily
do--and go down to the little bay in the Hartland district of which she
had spoken, in search of Hugo. I consented. She herself proposed to set
out quietly for Bideford, where she could be within easy reach of me, in
order to hear of my success or failure; while Hilda Wade, whose summer
vacation was to have begun in two days' time, offered to ask for an
extra day's leave so as to accompany her. The broken-hearted sister
accepted the offer; and, secrecy being above all things necessary,
we set off by different routes: the two women by Waterloo, myself by
Paddington.

We stopped that night at different hotels in Bideford; but next morning,
Hilda rode out on her bicycle, and accompanied me on mine for a mile or
two along the tortuous way towards Hartland. "Take nothing for granted,"
she said, as we parted; "and be prepared to find poor Hugo Le Geyt's
appearance greatly changed. He has eluded the police and their 'clues'
so far; therefore, I imagine he must have largely altered his dress and
exterior."

"I will find him," I answered, "if he is anywhere within twenty miles of
Hartland."

She waved her hand to me in farewell. I rode on after she left me
towards the high promontory in front, the wildest and least-visited part
of North Devon. Torrents of rain had fallen during the night; the slimy
cart-ruts and cattle-tracks on the moor were brimming with water. It
was a lowering day. The clouds drifted low. Black peat-bogs filled the
hollows; grey stone homesteads, lonely and forbidding, stood out here
and there against the curved sky-line. Even the high road was uneven and
in places flooded. For an hour I passed hardly a soul. At last, near a
crossroad with a defaced finger-post, I descended from my machine, and
consulted my ordnance map, on which Mrs. Mallet had marked ominously,
with a cross of red rink, the exact position of the little fishing
hamlet where Hugo used to spend his holidays. I took the turning which
seemed to me most likely to lead to it; but the tracks were so confused,
and the run of the lanes so uncertain--let alone the map being some
years out of date--that I soon felt I had lost my bearings. By a little
wayside inn, half hidden in a deep combe, with bog on every side, I
descended and asked for a bottle of ginger-beer; for the day