s looks expressed isolation, one significant
gesture proved familiarity with the environments. As his eyes travelled
up the tiers of houses and glanced along towards the Hoe, they paused now
and again and rested upon any prominent object as though upon a
remembered landmark, and each such recognition he emphasised with a nod
of the head.

He turned his back towards the town, directing his glance in a circle.
The afternoon, although toning to dusk, was kept bright by the scouring
of a keen wind, and he noted the guard-ship on his right at its old
moorings, the funnels rising like solid yellow columns from within a
stockade of masts; thence he looked across the water to the yellowing
woods of Mount Edgcumbe, watched for a moment or so the brown sails of
the fishing-smacks dancing a _chassez-croisez_ in the Sound, and turned
back to face the hill-side. A fellow-passenger, hustled past him by
half a dozen importunate children, extricated a hand to wave, and
shouted a cheery 'See you in town, Drake.' Drake roused himself with a
start and took a step in the same direction; he was confronted by a man
in a Norfolk jacket and tweed knickerbockers, who, standing by, had
caught the name.

'Captain Stephen Drake?'

'Yes. Why?'

The man mopped a perspiring face.

'I was afraid I had missed you. I should have gone out on the tender,
only I was late. Can you spare me a moment? You have time.'

'Certainly,' answered Drake, with a look of inquiry.

The man in the knickerbockers led the way along the quay until he came to
an angle between an unused derrick and a wall.

'We shall not be disturbed here,' he said, and he drew an oblong
note-book and a cedar-wood pencil from his pocket.

'I begin to understand,' said Drake, with a laugh.

'You can have no objection?'

There was the suavity of the dentist who holds the forceps behind his
back in the tone of the speaker's voice.

'On the contrary, a little notoriety will be helpful to me too.'

That word 'too' jarred on the reporter, suggesting a flippancy which he
felt to be entirely out of place. The feeling, however, was quickly
swallowed up in the satisfaction which he experienced at obtaining so
easily a result which had threatened the need of diplomacy.

'_O si sic omnes!_' he exclaimed, and made a note of the quotation upon
the top of the open leaf.

'Surely the quotation is rather hackneyed to begin with?' suggested Drake
with a perfectly serious inquisitiveness. The