He made, indeed, and
though swift with the work, so good a job that, inspecting the boat
when he had done, I judged she would stand the strain of sailing--
whereas I had looked forward to a grilling pull in a craft that
leaked like a basket.

"At a quarter to ten, by my watch, we pushed off, stepped mast and
hoisted sail--a small balance-lug. We carried a brisk offshore
wind--a soldier's wind--which southerned as the day wore on, and
again flew and broke off-shore as we neared home. I steered:
Farrell, for the most part, dozed after his labours. He had not, I
may say, one single faculty of a seaman in his whole make-up.
He could mend a boat or make an imitation Sheraton wardrobe; but,
when the both were made, he'd have sailed the one about as well as
the other.

"He dozed uneasily, with many twitchings. Once he woke up and said,
'I thank God he lay so as we couldn't see his face. Would it have
been swollen much, think you? . . . Bleached, I make no doubt. . . .'

"'What about worse?' I answered. 'I noticed a crab or two.'

"He put up his hands to his face. 'How the devil can you talk so!'
he stammered.

"'It was you who started questions,' said I.

"'Suicide, you think?' he asked, after half an hour's silence, during
which his mind had plainly been tugging away from the horrible
subject only to find it irresistible.

"'All pointed to it,' I answered. 'As for the motive, we can only
guess.'

"'Where's the guesswork?' he demanded fiercely. 'Cast here, in this
awful loneliness--' I saw him look around on sea and cliff with a
shiver.

"'He had the dog,' said I. 'You find Rover here a companion, don't
you? I had a notion, Farrell, that you were fond of dogs. . . . I
used to be.'

"We downed sail hereabouts, and pulled in for the cleft and the
anchorage we called home. The sea under the smoothing land-wind ran
through the passage as calmly as through a miller's leat: and I will
own it was happier to be by that shore where my cross still stood
over Santa than by the other, where that other body lay, face-down,
with the weight whipped to its ankle. "'Wonder who he was?' said
Farrell late that evening, as we parted to go to our quarters.
'A missionary, I shouldn't be surprised.'

"'If so,' said I, 'he tumbled on a sinecure. Since your mind runs on
him and you want to sleep, make it out that he was a bishop, and
home-sickened for the Athenaeum.'"

"I'm coming to the end, Roddy; and you shall have