"Nobly said, sir!" exclaimed Daniel Meggison. "But what I would ask is—why give the game away now?" He lowered his voice to a whisper, and took a step towards the younger man. "You've played the game splendidly; play it a little longer. Here is a village—ready and willing to supply all our needs; here is a pleasant land, where we may pass the summer, or what remains of it, in idyllic simplicity. Why change anything? For my own part, I needed but little to complete my personal happiness, and that little I have found. Your credit here, sir—or the credit of your servant—is particularly well established; they bow before your name, sir."
"Are you another of them anxious to keep the fraud going?" asked Gilbert in amazement.
"Certainly, sir," replied the unabashed Daniel Meggison. "In a primitive fashion I am very happy here: what will happen when the winter comes on is of course quite another matter. But let the future take care of itself; for the moment we are children, and we laugh in the sunshine."
"The tide's turning, sir," said Pringle, getting up from his box, and preparing to shoulder it.
"I'm afraid the tide has turned for me," said Gilbert with a sigh, as he moved away.
Daniel Meggison was very merry over breakfast that morning. He chose to be flippant with Gilbert, and to rally Pringle on the ease with which these islands could really be inhabited when it came to the pinch. Dubbing himself the new Crusoe, he declared his intention of searching the shore that very morning, in the hope to find that solitary footprint of a possible Man Friday. He asked Gilbert whether it would not be wise to set about at once the building of a stockade, the better to protect themselves against the possible incursion of a dusky foe. Altogether Daniel Meggison enjoyed the situation mightily, and bore himself with that easy flippant gaiety that had marked him out in the Arcadia Arms as being above the common herd. He displayed his power by openly asking Gilbert if he had ever been to the west coast of Ireland, and if so, what he thought of the scenery.
But it was by a combination of circumstances that the secret was at last exposed to those who already were not in possession of it; and when the exposure came at last, it seemed to come in the strangest way from several quarters. In the first place, Daniel Meggison, growing bolder, walked across that narrow neck of land one morning, and spent the day in the village, or in an adjacent one, being regarded by the inhabitants as a species of amiable tramp who had drifted out of the great Unknown to enliven the monotony of their existence. As ill-luck would have it, however, he drifted down across the bridge to the shore again, blissfully forgetful of the fact that the tide only served at certain hours, and discovered that he was cut off for the night. Drifting back again, he made a bed for himself in an outhouse, and slept the night away.
But to Bessie his disappearance was a great and inexplicable disaster. She had been in the habit, even as in the old days of Arcadia Street, of bidding him good night, and asking the question—futile here—whether she could do anything more for him. But this night he was missing; and an inquiry in various directions among that very scanty population of the island revealed the fact that nothing had been seen of him since early morning.
Gilbert had his suspicions, of course, and so had Pringle; but Bessie was frantic with anxiety. A thousand things, in her imagination, might have happened to him; he might have climbed the rocks and fallen into the sea, or he might have fallen asleep on the shore and been carried away by the waves. At all events, the most exhaustive inquiry failed to find him within the limited circumference of the island; and Bessie was suddenly a new power to be reckoned with.