The Watchers

table and waited with he

e lad, who stood just within

en it alread

olve you. The virtue of it lies in the forswearing. Now!" an

ded her

is wild doings on the Guinea coast, in Africa. There can be no doubt that he spent some considerable portion of his life there, and that he managed to scrape together a sufficient fortune. It is likely, therefore, that he was e

given her very tangible proofs. It was necessary for me, however, to say it, for I had nothing but suspicion to go upon, and I looked to her in some way, either by words

e very

Sunday, four years ago, when Cullen Mayle sat in the stocks and George Glen came to Tr

d, close to our cottage, when he came ashore in a

told you, I think, that he had been quartermaster

es

the ship by

N

r my father turned upon him fiercely when he spoke it, and Mr. Glen immediately said that he was m

ction with the Guinea coast. But I could not be sure. I was anxious to discover George Glen's business with Adam Mayle, and very li

yle, and Lieutenant Clutterbuck were of the party. Together you sailed across

agreed. "There w

all that afternoon and evening

ey had their opportunity and made use of i

e could be heard though the door was shut and the eavesdro

. "But the servants were in bed

e a start and a

ck told how Cullen Mayle had climbed through the window, and ho

ered some sort of secret which might prove of value to himself, unless he had overhead George Glen talking to

eaning across the table, her fac

yle on the road as I was travelling here. He counterfeited an ague, which he told me he had caugh

se," cri

bt of it,"

money, in some voyage to Africa. Cullen Mayle overheard it, and got the start of Geor

. "Did I not tell you you w

ted. "We have to discover what it was that Gle

and she looked to me co

said I, "to go boldly to Georg

speak, do

er to an issue. We were both of us silent for some while. The very confidence which Helen displayed stung m

hurt,"

table. It was cut in one or two p

he hill yesterday night and cut it with

vertook Cullen upon the road, and you reached the islands

my feet. "And if Dick will sail me across to

r two, as though she had brushed against paint--or blood. I looked at my hand scratched and torn by the gorse bush. It would have been bleeding

pose," I said--"everything at all e

ing," sh

to Tresco even as I had done. But no ship had put into the Road that day but one which brought Castile soap from Marseilles. We sailed back to Tresco, and ran the boat's nose into the sand not twenty yards from the door of the house on Merchant's Point. A m

with the negro to Penzance. Peter Tortue he is called, and he

ting for our return. I told her that Cullen Mayle could not by any means have yet reached the Scillies, and that we

New Grimsby and seek a bed at the 'Palace' Inn. I shall besides make the acquaintance of Mr. George

ely enough. "I am no

u will

" she

ket as if by accident, I let her see again the corner of

e with the easiest laugh imaginable. "I sh

e sure thing to comfort me. She was to-day hopeful, however much she despaired yesterday. She relied upon me to rescue Cullen from his peril. I was not sure that I should be doing her the service she imagined it to be,

to my left, and after a little I stopped again. I marched up and down that hill, to the right, to the left, for perhaps the space of an hour, and at last I came upon that for which I searched--a steep slope where the grass was crushed, and underneath that slope a sheer descent. On the brink of the precipice--for that I judged it to be--I saw a broken gorse-bush. I lay down on my face and carefully crawled down the slope. The roots of the gorse-bush

anite, on the horn of a tiny bay. The windows looked across the bay; behind the house stretched that tangled garden, and at the end of the garden rose the Merchant's Rock. As it stood thus in the evening light, with the smoke curling from its chimneys, and the sea murmuring at its door,

h a great beard and hair sprouting from his ears and nostrils. He was another of the five no doubt, and though he went by he did not pass out of sight. I waited, hoping that he would go, for I had a great desire to examine the barn beneath m

as anxious to do it, to try the door, to enter the barn, but I dared not, for the sailor was within sight, and I had no wish to arouse any suspicions. Helen had told me

ce; all round a grey sea went down to a grey sky, and sea and sky were merged; and at my feet the lights began to twinkle in the little fishi

so that it was thought he had run away again, and the key of the cottage was gone. It had not been seen since yesterday, and Dick had been accused of purloining it. I explained to Mrs. Parmiter that it wa

the door for show. No one locks his door in Tresco. What shou

a scolding. Why, you are a hero to everybody in thes

er from chasing me about

s," said I, "to be barbarous

ick, violently. "And as for the key--of what cons

ence than your brui

, for instance; if it's a big key you can weigh a line with it, and perhaps catch a mackerel for your breakfast. And there's another