once to explain the joke with considerable
volubility.

Bernard Merefleet rose from his chair with a frowning countenance and
made his way down to the old stone quay below the hotel.

CHAPTER II

The air was keen and salt. He paused on the well-worn stone wall and
turned his face to the spray. A hundred memories were at work in his
brain, and the relief of solitude was unspeakable. It was horribly
lonely, but he hugged his loneliness. That laughing voice in the hotel
coffee-room had driven him forth to seek it. No mental or physical
discomfort would have induced him to return.

He propped himself against a piece of stonework and gazed moodily out to
sea. He did not want to leave this haven of his childhood. Yet the
thought of remaining in close proximity to a party of tourists was
detestable to him. Why in the world couldn't they stop away, he wondered
savagely? And then his own inconsistency occurred to him, and he smiled
grimly. For the place undoubtedly had its charm.

A fisherman in a blue jersey lounged on to the quay at this point of
his meditations, and, old habit asserting itself, Merefleet greeted
him with a remark on the weather. The man halted in front of him in a
conversational attitude. Merefleet knew the position well. It came back
to him on a flood of memory. He could not believe that it was twenty
years since he had talked with such an one.

"Wind in the nor'-east, sir," said the man.

"Yes. It's cold for the time of year," said Merefleet.

The man assented.

"Fish plentiful?" asked Merefleet.

"Nothing to boast of," was the guarded reply.

Merefleet had expected it. Right well he knew these fisher-folk.

"You get a few visitors now, I see," Merefleet observed.

The fisherman nodded. "Don't know what they come for," he observed.
"Bathing ain't good, and them pleasure-boats--well"--he lifted his
shoulders expressively--"half-a-capful of wind would upset 'em. There's a
lady staying at this here hotel--an American lady she be--what goes out
every day regular, she and a young gentleman with her. They won't have me
nor yet any of my mates to go along, and yet--bless you--they could no
more manage that boat if a squall was to come up nor they could fly. I
told her once as it wasn't safe. And she laughed in my face, sir. She
did, really."

Merefleet smiled a little.

"Well, if she likes to run the risk it's not your fault," he said.

"No, sir. It ain't. But that don't make me any eas