hunger
sharp-set with half-a-dozen hours struggling with the wind, Bridget bade
me be off at once to the Dutchman's Howff, which is in Colvend, just
where the Boreland march dyke comes down to the edge of the cliff. I was
to wait there on the edge of the heugh till one came and called me by
name. When I complained of hunger, she put some dry bread into my hand,
crying out that I might seek meat where I had worked my work.

"I saw that the 'ben' room was empty, and the blankets thrown over the
three chair backs. But when I asked where the sick man was, Bridget
stamped her foot and bade me attend to my business and she would take
care of hers. But Jerry, my oldest boy, had a word with me before I left
for the march dyke. He told me that the man 'down-the-house' had gone
that morning as soon as my back was turned, after paying his mother in
gold sovereigns, which she had immediately hidden.

"So I went and waited by the Boreland march dyke--a wild place where
even the heather is laid flat by the wind. The gulls and corbies were
calling down the cliff, and at the foot the sea was roaring through a
narrow gully and spreading out fan-shaped along the sands of the
Dutchman's Howff.

"I waited long, having nought to eat except the sheaf of loaf bread I
gat with such an ill grace from Bridget, and at the end I was beginning
to lose patience, when from the other side of the gully I heard a crying
and a voice bade me follow the dyke upwards and stand by to help.

"So upon the top of the wall I got, and there beneath me was the man I
had last seen lying in Bridget's best bed, cossetted and cared for as
if he were a prince. But for all that he was short and angry, bidding me
dispatch and help him or he would lose his tide."

"And did he wear the same clothes as when last you saw him?" said
Shepstone Oglethorpe, with a shrewd air.

At which Boyd Connoway laughed for the first time since he had come into
the presence of his betters.

"No," he said, "for the last time I saw him he was under the sheets with
one of my sarks on, and Bridget's best linen sheet tied in ribbons about
his head."

"And how, then, was he dressed?" said the Fiscal, with a glance of scorn
at Shepstone.

"Oh," answered Boyd Connoway, "just like you or me. I took no particular
notice. More than that, it was an ill time for seeing patterns, being
nigh on to pit mirk. He bade me lead the way. And this, to the best of
my knowledge and ability, I did. But th