He took me by the arm, and walked me away with him along the road by which he had come. I dare say I had deserved his reproof—but I was not going to help him to set traps for Rosanna Spearman, for all that. Thief or no thief, legal or not legal, I don’t care—I pitied her.
“What do you want of me?” I asked, shaking him off, and stopping short.
“Only a little information about the country round here,” said the Sergeant.
I couldn’t well object to improve Sergeant Cuff in his geography.
“Is there any path, in that direction, leading to the sea-beach from this house?” asked the Sergeant. He pointed, as he spoke, to the fir-plantation which led to the Shivering Sand.
“Yes,” I said, “there is a path.”
“Show it to me.”
Side by side, in the grey of the summer evening, Sergeant Cuff and I set forth for the Shivering Sand.
CHAPTER XV
The Sergeant remained silent, thinking his own thoughts, till we entered the plantation of firs which led to the quicksand. There he roused himself, like a man whose mind was made up, and spoke to me again.