per stole into my ear--

"William, we have got to the end of our journey."

"Mr. Dark," I stammered out, "is that you? What, in Heaven's name, do
you mean?"

"The yacht put in here," was the answer, still in a whisper, "and your
blackguard of a master came ashore--"

"Oh, Mr. Dark," I broke in, "don't tell me that the letter is true!"

"Every word of it," says he. "He was married here, and was off again to
the Mediterranean with Number Two a good three weeks before we left your
mistress's house. Hush! don't say a word, Go to sleep again, or strike
a light, if you like it better. Do anything but come downstairs with
me. I'm going to find out all the particulars without seeming to want to
know one of them. Yours is a very good-looking face, William, but it's
so infernally honest that I can't trust it in the tap-room. I'm making
friends with the Scotchmen already. They know my opinion of Arthur's
Seat; they _see_ what I think of whisky; and I rather think it won't be
long before they hear that my mother's maiden name was Macleod."

With those words he slipped out of the room, and left me, as he had
found me, in the dark.

I was far too much agitated by what I had heard to think of going to
sleep again, so I struck a light, and tried to amuse myself as well as I
could with an old newspaper that had been stuffed into my carpet bag.
It was then nearly ten o'clock. Two hours later, when the house shut up,
Mr. Dark came back to me again in high spirits.

"I have got the whole case here," says he, tapping his forehead--"the
whole case, as neat and clean as if it was drawn in a brief. That master
of yours doesn't stick at a trifle, William. It's my opinion that your
mistress and you have not seen the last of him yet."

We were sleeping that night in a double-bedded room. As soon as Mr. Dark
had secured the door and disposed himself comfortably in his bed, he
entered on a detailed narrative of the particulars communicated to him
in the tap-room. The substance of what he told me may be related as
follows:

The yacht had had a wonderful run all the way to Cape Wrath. On rounding
that headland she had met the wind nearly dead against her, and had
beaten every inch of the way to the sea-port town, where she had put in
to get a supply of provisions, and to wait for a change in the wind.

Mr. James Smith had gone ashore to look about him, and to see whether
the principal hotel was the sort of house at which he would like to