h grave anguish to talk of going to the police in the
morning, of printing descriptive bills, of setting people to drag the
ponds for miles around. It was extremely gruesome. I murmured something
about communicating with the young lady's relatives. It seemed to me a
very natural suggestion; but Fyne and his wife exchanged such a
significant glance that I felt as though I had made a tactless remark.

But I really wanted to help poor Fyne; and as I could see that, manlike,
he suffered from the present inability to act, the passive waiting, I
said: "Nothing of this can be done till to-morrow. But as you have given
me an insight into the nature of your thoughts I can tell you what may be
done at once. We may go and look at the bottom of the old quarry which
is on the level of the road, about a mile from here."

The couple made big eyes at this, and then I told them of my meeting with
the girl. You may be surprised but I assure you I had not perceived this
aspect of it till that very moment. It was like a startling revelation;
the past throwing a sinister light on the future. Fyne opened his mouth
gravely and as gravely shut it. Nothing more. Mrs. Fyne said, "You had
better go," with an air as if her self-possession had been pricked with a
pin in some secret place.

And I--you know how stupid I can be at times--I perceived with dismay for
the first time that by pandering to Fyne's morbid fancies I had let
myself in for some more severe exercise. And wasn't I sorry I spoke! You
know how I hate walking--at least on solid, rural earth; for I can walk a
ship's deck a whole foggy night through, if necessary, and think little
of it. There is some satisfaction too in playing the vagabond in the
streets of a big town till the sky pales above the ridges of the roofs. I
have done that repeatedly for pleasure--of a sort. But to tramp the
slumbering country-side in the dark is for me a wearisome nightmare of
exertion.

With perfect detachment Mrs. Fyne watched me go out after her husband.
That woman was flint.

* * * * *

The fresh night had a smell of soil, of turned-up sods like a grave--an
association particularly odious to a sailor by its idea of confinement
and narrowness; yes, even when he has given up the hope of being buried
at sea; about the last hope a sailor gives up consciously after he has
been, as it does happen, decoyed by some chance into the toils of the
land. A strong grave-like sniff. The ditch