"'Sublime tobacco! which from east to west
Cheers the tar's labour or the Turkman's rest.'"
"Your pockets are absolute shops," said the girl, delighted that his temper had improved. "What other stores do you carry about with you?"
He lit his pipe and solemnly gave an inventory of his worldly goods. Beyond the items she had previously seen he could only enumerate a silver dollar, a very soiled and crumpled handkerchief, and a bit of tin. A box of Norwegian matches he threw away as useless, but Iris recovered them.
"You never know what purpose they may serve," she said. In after days a weird significance was attached to this simple phrase.
"Why do you carry about a bit of tin?" she went on.
How the atmosphere of deception clung to him! Here was a man compelled to lie outrageously who, in happier years, had prided himself on scrupulous accuracy even in small things.
"Plague upon it!" he silently protested. "Subterfuge and deceit are as much at home in this deserted island as in Mayfair."
"I found it here, Miss Deane," he answered.
Luckily she interpreted "here" as applying to the cave.