at it'; and then he stalked off
and I watched his lean figure till it was round the turn of the hill.

All that morning I smoked peacefully by the burn, and let my thoughts
wander over the whole business. I had got precisely what Blenkiron
wanted, a post office for the enemy. It would need careful handling,
but I could see the juiciest lies passing that way to the _Grosses
Haupiquartier_. Yet I had an ugly feeling at the back of my head that
it had been all too easy, and that Ivery was not the man to be duped in
this way for long. That set me thinking about the queer talk on the
crevice. The poetry stuff I dismissed as the ordinary password,
probably changed every time. But who were Chelius and Bommaerts, and
what in the name of goodness were the Wild Birds and the Cage Birds?
Twice in the past three years I had had two such riddles to
solve--Scudder's scribble in his pocket-book, and Harry Bullivant's
three words. I remembered how it had only been by constant chewing at
them that I had got a sort of meaning, and I wondered if fate would
some day expound this puzzle also.

Meantime I had to get back to London as inconspicuously as I had come.
It might take some doing, for the police who had been active in Morvern
might be still on the track, and it was essential that I should keep
out of trouble and give no hint to Gresson and his friends that I had
been so far north. However, that was for Amos to advise me on, and
about noon I picked up my waterproof with its bursting pockets and set
off on a long detour up the coast. All that blessed day I scarcely met
a soul. I passed a distillery which seemed to have quit business, and
in the evening came to a little town on the sea where I had a bed and
supper in a superior kind of public-house.

Next day I struck southward along the coast, and had two experiences of
interest. I had a good look at Ranna, and observed that the _Tobermory_
was no longer there. Gresson had only waited to get his job finished;
he could probably twist the old captain any way he wanted. The second
was that at the door of a village smithy I saw the back of the
Portuguese Jew. He was talking Gaelic this time--good Gaelic it
sounded, and in that knot of idlers he would have passed for the
ordinariest kind of gillie.

He did not see me, and I had no desire to give him the chance, for I
had an odd feeling that the day might come when it would be good for us
to meet as strangers.

That night I put up bol