when it comes to puzzles."

He filled a cup with coffee from the shining urn and resumed his
chair.

"You see . . ." Some intimation of his gaucherie made him stumble. "Of
course," he went on, semi-apologetic, "you understand that I'm going
on the assumption that you're as human as I am."

"Thank you," said Sally sweetly.

"Human enough," he explained, "not to think I'm a savage because I've
reminded you of last night."

"I see no reason--" she began with dignity.

"And there isn't any," he argued heartily. "We're both old enough to
behave like grown-ups. Only, a fellow never can tell where he stands
with most of these festive dames. I've been lorgnetted until I'm
scared to open my mouth. But with you--well, it's like meeting
somebody from home to talk to you."

"But the puzzle?" she reminded him with more patience than he knew.

"Oh, yes. I was going to say when I side-tracked myself: what got me
up was Lyttleton. He has the room next mine, you know. I'd just turned
out my bedside light--been reading, you understand--when I heard his
door open very gently and somebody go pussy-footing down the
hall. And for some reason that kept me awake--because it was none of
my business, I guess--waiting for him to come back and wondering what
in thunder took him out on the prowl like that. And when I had
wondered myself wide awake I got up and dressed--thought I'd take a
walk, too, since the night was so fine. I honestly had no idea of
following him--that was all an accident, my butting in the way I did."

Sudden perception of a footing upon ground properly taboo even to
angels caused the man to flush brick-red. His eyes sought Sally's in
honest consternation.

"Hope you don't mind," he mumbled.

"Please go on," she said, conscious of the heat in her own cheeks, and
holding him in an esteem proportionately more poisonous.

"Well. About this morning: As I say, I went down to the beach for a
dip. You know how that beach is--about a twelve-foot breadth of sand
from the bottom of the cliff when the tide's high, with about twenty
feet more when it's low. So foot-prints show until the weather rubs
them out--takes a tolerable storm, as a rule. Below high-water mark
it's different; the sand is covered up and smoothed out twice a day.
Well, then, just below high-water mark--that is, about five feet below
it, or at quarter-tide mark--I noticed the print of a rowboat's
bows on the sand. It had landed there and waited a while--d