THE MYSTERY OF THE INN
BY THE SHORE.

“BY JOVE, JORDAN, I NEVER THOUGHT YOU COULD PAINT BEFORE.”—See Page [19].

THE MYSTERY OF THE INN
BY THE SHORE.

A Novel.

BY
FLORENCE WARDEN,
Author of “The House on the Marsh,” etc.

NEW YORK:
ROBERT BONNER’S SONS.
PUBLISHERS.

Copyright, 1895,
By ROBERT BONNER’S SONS.

(All rights reserved.)
PRESS OF
THE NEW YORK LEDGER
NEW YORK.

THE
Mystery of the Inn by the Shore.

CHAPTER I.

PROSPERITY and the sea had deserted Stroan together. As the waves receded, leaving a bare stretch of sand where once whole fleets had ridden at anchor, the once flourishing town had dwindled and sunk, in spite of valiant struggles to revive and retain her ancient supremacy.

In the length and breadth of the land no place could be found so sleepy, so much behind the times, so tortuous of street and so moss-grown of stone, as Stroan had become, when, by a happy chance, the game of golf came down from the North and established itself as the fashion. Then somebody discovered that the bare and unproductive sands between Stroan and the sea made excellent “links;” visitors began to arrive and to put up at a brand-new hotel built expressly for their accommodation, and a little breath of active life began to stir once more in the narrow, winding streets.

Among the visitors, one warm September, came down from London three friends, who tempered their devotion to golf by various other pursuits, each according to his inclination.

Otto Conybeare, the eldest of the three, was a journalist, who had aspirations to literature of a less ephemeral sort. He used his holiday by trying his hand at both prose and poetry, of which his two companions offered trenchant if not discriminating criticism. He was a tall, thin, dark-skinned man, with clean-cut, aquiline features, and was looked upon by the two others as their champion and social leader.

Willie Jordan, the youngest of the party, was short and, alas! fat, with curly, light hair and a huge, tawny mustache, which he had cultivated as the trademark of his calling, which was that of an artist.

Clifford King, the remaining member of the trio, was a barrister, to whom no one had as yet intrusted a brief. He was a dark-haired, blue-eyed, good-humored young fellow, whom everybody liked and in whom all his friends believed with an enthusiasm which was not without excuse, for Clifford had brains and was only waiting for the opportunity which comes to all who can wait in the right way.

They had been at Stroan five days, and the little god, Cupid, had already spoiled the harmony of the party.

Willie was the victim, of course.

It was always Willie who could not resist a pair of handsome eyes, black, blue or gray; so that when he became attached to the society of old Colonel Bostal, and would insist upon accompanying that uninteresting old gentleman from the Links to his home three miles away, Clifford and Otto exchanged winks, and having found out that the colonel had a daughter, at once believed that they had probed successfully into the mystery of Willie’s civility.

So, justly incensed at Willie’s duplicity, for that young man had spoken slightingly of Miss Bostal’s attractions, Otto and Clifford determined upon tracking the traitor to his lair.

This they did on a sunny afternoon, when the straight road over the reclaimed marsh between Stroan and Shingle End was thick in white dust.

They knew the colonel’s house from the outside, having passed it on many a walk from Stroan to Courtstairs, the next town. It was about half a mile beyond the Blue Lion, a picturesque roadside inn which was the halfway house between Courtstairs and Stroan. Very poor the colonel was, as he took care to inform everybody, and very poverty-stricken his dwelling looked, in the observant eyes of the two young men, as they rang the bell and waited a long time before any one answered it.

Shingle End was a pretty, tumbledown house, which stood at the angle formed by two roads. It had once been white, but neglect and hard weather had made it a mottled gray; while cracked and dusty windows, rickety shutters and untrimmed trees and bushes combined to give the place a dreary and unprosperous appearance.

Behind the house was a garden, with a poultry-run and a paddock; and Otto had seen, as they passed, the colonel reading his paper under an apple-tree, while the flutter of a petticoat in the background among the trees seemed to confirm their suspicions.

“We’ve unearthed the rascal,” smiled Otto, as they at last heard footsteps in the house in answer to their second ring.

But when the door was opened, their hearts sank, for there stood before them a woman of forty, at least, small, lean, dowdy, precise of manner and slow of speech, wearing a pair of gardening-gloves and a sunbonnet, who looked at them in some surprise, and asked them stiffly what they wanted.

Otto, who was acute enough to perceive that this must be the colonel’s daughter, apologized for disturbing her, and said they had brought a letter for their friend Jordan, who, they understood, was spending the afternoon with Colonel Bostal. They would not have intruded but that they believed the letter was very important, as it was marked on the envelope “Please deliver immediately.”

And the plotter drew from his pocket, with ostentatious care, a missive which he and Clifford had prepared together, and which, with great ingenuity, had been made to look as if it had passed through the post.

But Miss Bostal glanced at the letter and shook her head.

“There is no one with my father,” she said, “and I don’t know any one of that name. But if you will come into the drawing-room I will ask him.”

“Oh, no, not for the world. We could not think of intruding. We must have made a mistake,” stammered Otto, while Clifford hurriedly passed out by the little wooden gate into the road.

In the meantime, however, Colonel Bostal, having heard the voices, had come through the narrow passage from the garden to learn the meaning of this unusual sound. The matter was explained to him by his daughter, amidst further apologies from Otto.

The colonel, a withered-looking, gray-faced man of about sixty-five, in a threadbare and patched coat and a battered Panama hat, remembered the name at once.

“Jordan? Jordan? Yes, of course I know him,” said he at once. “A little fellow, with a long mustache. Yes, he often walks home with me as far as the bridge, but there he always turns back and excuses himself from coming any farther.”

Otto looked perplexed by this information; but over Miss Bostal’s thin, pinched face there came a little, pale smile.

“Try the Blue Lion,” she said, rather primly.

Otto grew stiff.

“My friend is no frequenter of taverns,” said he.

“Try the Blue Lion,” said Miss Bostal again.

Her father burst into a little, dry laugh.

“The Blue Lion has a good many frequenters who are not frequenters of other taverns,” said he. “Nell Claris, the niece of the man who keeps it, is a protégée of my daughter’s, and the prettiest girl in the place.”

A light broke over Otto’s face. But Miss Bostal looked grave.

“I shall have to speak to her very seriously,” said she, with a little frown. “She encourages half the young men of Stroan to waste their time out here.”

But the colonel smiled and shook his head doubtfully.

“It’s of no use speaking to a pretty girl,” said he, with decision. “You will only be told to mind your own business. And there’s no harm in Nell.”

“I know that,” retorted his daughter, not spitefully, but with a spinster’s stern solicitude. “I shouldn’t be so much interested in her if I didn’t know that she’s a good little thing. But she’s giddy and thoughtless. I shall really have to advise her uncle to send her back to school again.”

“She won’t go,” said the colonel. “And if she would, old Claris wouldn’t part with her. We must rely on the effect of your sermons, Theodora.”

Father and daughter had carried on this dialogue without including the visitor in the conversation, so that Otto, who prided himself upon being an acute observer, had an opportunity of peeping into the rooms on each side of the passage, as the doors were open, without moving from where he stood.

He was much struck by what he saw: by the carpets worn so threadbare that there was no trace of the pattern to be seen on them; by the carefully-darned table-covers, the worn-out furniture. All was neatly kept and spotlessly clean; all showed a pinched poverty which there was no attempt to hide.

He withdrew with more apologies as soon as the short discussion between father and daughter was ended, and rejoined his friend outside.

“Well,” said Clifford, as Otto turned toward Stroan in silence, “and what kept you so long talking to the severe-looking lady?”

“I wasn’t talking. I was listening,” answered Otto, “and working out in my mind a romance, a pitiful romance, of the kind that is not showy enough for people to care to hear about.”

“What! Do you mean to say that Jordan’s fallen in love with that mature and lean spinster?” asked Clifford in astonishment.

“Oh, dear, no. He’s fallen in love; I’ve found that out; but it is with the usual maid of the inn—nobody half so interesting as Miss Bostal.”

“Interesting!”

“Yes. I have an idea that the lean spinster is a heroine. Not the sort of heroine one troubles oneself about, of course. But while they were talking about a certain ‘Nell,’ who is evidently the object of Jordan’s priceless but transient affections just now, I looked into their rooms, their poor little dining-room, their bare, long drawing-room, and I saw such a history of pinched lives and sordid struggles as made me long for pen and paper.”

Clifford groaned.

“It doesn’t take much to make you do that!” he grumbled. “And I don’t think your subject a very interesting one.”

“Of course you would not. It is not obvious or commonplace or highly-colored enough for you,” retorted Otto. “But to my mind there is something infinitely pathetic in the tattered old coat of this dignified and distinguished-looking old man, and in the darns which the daughter must have lost the brightness of her eyes over.”

“Decidedly, my dear boy, you must do it in poetry, not prose,” said Clifford, mockingly.

Otto would have retorted, but that they had now reached the little bridge over the river Fleet, and were within a few yards of the halfway house.

“This is the place where Jordan spends his afternoons,” said Otto, leading the way to the little inn.

“Let’s have him out.”

The Blue Lion was a very unpretending establishment, old, but without any pretensions to historical or archæological interest, small, inconvenient, and weather-beaten. Standing as it did midway between sleepy Stroan and democratic Courtstairs, it was the house of call for all the carriers, farmers and cattle-drovers all the year round, while in the months of July and August its little bar was thronged with the denizens of the Mile-end Road, who take their pleasure in brakes, with concertinas and howls and discordant songs.

A few late visitors of this sort were in the little bar when Clifford and Otto entered. But there was no sign of Jordan. Both the young men looked with curiosity at the woman who was serving behind the bar, a portly young woman with a ready tongue, who in her sturdy build and large coarse hands, as well as in the weather-beaten look of her complexion, betrayed that she was accustomed to fill up her time, when work was slack inside the house, with out-door labor of the roughest kind.

When the two friends came out, they looked at each other in disgust.

“She isn’t even young!” cried Otto. “Nearer thirty-five than twenty-five, I’ll swear!”

“And her voice! And her detestable Kentish accent!” added Clifford. “And those high cheek-bones, and that short nose! It’s a type I loathe—the type of the common shrew.”

“I shouldn’t have thought it of Jordan!” murmured Otto, in pity tempered with indignation.

“But where is the ruffian himself?” asked Clifford, stopping short. “Do you think we are on a wrong scent, after all?”

“If it were anybody but Jordan, I should say yes,” said Otto, deliberately. “But his susceptibility is so colossal that I see no reason to doubt even this.”

Nevertheless he followed Clifford, when the latter turned back toward the little bridge.

“There’s a cottage,” said the more humane King, “a little cottage by the roadside. Let us see if we can discern a petticoat in the neighborhood of that. We may be doing the poor chap an injustice, after all.”

But before they reached the cottage the attention of the two young men was arrested by the sound of a girl’s voice on the left, just before they reached the bridge. It was a voice so bright, so sweet, with such a suggestion of bubbling laughter in its tones, that they both stopped short and looked at each other with faces full of remorse.

“That’s Nell!” said Otto.

“We have done him a cruel wrong,” murmured Clifford.

And with one accord they bent their steps in the direction of the voice; and after getting over a wooden paling by the roadside, scattering a colony of fowls on the other side, and making their way over the rough grass beside the river where the boats were drawn up which carried excursionists to Fleet Castle, they came upon a wooden shed, and a strong smell of pitch, and two human figures. The one was Jordan, coatless, with his straw hat tilted to the back of his head, a tar-brush in one hand and a tin can in the other, engaged in the humble but useful task of covering the cow-shed with a new coat of pitch.

But his two friends scarcely glanced at him. It was the other figure that absorbed all their powers of vision—a slender girl in a print frock, with a white cotton blouse and an enormous straw hat. This was the Nell who wasted the time of half the young men of Stroan, and who would have wasted the time of half the young men of London if they had only once seen her. A beauty of pure Saxon type she was, with the opaque white skin which the sun does not scorch or redden, with rose-pink cheeks, a child’s pouting mouth, and big blue eyes that made a young man hold his breath. Her hair had turned since childhood from flaxen to a deeper tint, and was now a light bronze color. There was about her an air of refinement as well as modesty which could not fail to astonish a stranger who found her in these strange circumstances. She saw the newcomers long before poor Jordan did, and she watched them approach while the unfortunate artist toiled on at his inglorious task.

Perhaps the girl had seen the three young men together; perhaps it was only feminine quickness of wit which made her jump to the right conclusion.

“I think there are some friends of yours coming this way, Mr. Jordan,” she said, in a voice as refined as her appearance and manner.

Poor Willie started back, stumbling over the rough ground, and presented a very red, moist face to their view.

But they took no notice of him. Stepping genially over the rough mounds, looking beautifully cool and clean and smart and well-dressed beside the besmirched and perspiring Willie, they threw back their heads, half-closed their eyes, and proceeded to criticise the work before them with as much care and conscientiousness as if it had been a painting on the walls of the New Gallery.

“I say, old chap, it really is the best thing you’ve ever done,” began Otto, with kindly admiration.

“By Jove, Jordan, I never thought you could paint before,” added Clifford. “There’s a broad touch, and at the same time a nice feeling for effect, which shows an immense advance on your previous work. You seem, so to speak, to have put all your strength into the work. It does you immense credit—it really does, old chap.”

“Some meaning in it, too. And that’s the point where you always failed before.”

To the intense disgust of Willie, pretty Nell was evidently much amused by these remarks. And, although a feeling of condescending gratitude to her abject admirer made her try to control her enjoyment, Clifford saw in her blue eyes a merriment none the less keen that she subdued its outward manifestation.

“It’s easy to chaff,” grumbled Willie, hotly. “Perhaps you’d like to try the work yourselves.”

“No, old chap. We should never get that depth of color,” said Otto, calmly surveying the artist’s heated, crimson face.

“It wants a natural aptitude for that sort of thing,” said Clifford.

“Well, you can take yourselves off if you have nothing better to do than to find fault with what you haven’t the pluck to do yourselves,” said Willie, sharply.

“We’re not finding fault. We are expressing our admiration,” said Otto.

“And we are quite ready to try our hand ourselves,” said Clifford, as, with a sudden burst of energy, born of his desire to linger in the neighborhood of Nell, he threw off his own coat and struggled for possession of the tar-brush.

But Willie resisted, and there was danger of their both suffering severely from the nature of the prize, when the object of so much singular loyalty interposed.

“If you really are so full of energy that you need some vent for it,” said she, in a voice which was full of suggestions of demure merriment, “you might help to pull up those boats.”

And she glanced at two of the small pleasure-craft in the river, both of which had evidently suffered some injury, as their water-logged condition bore witness.

Clifford set about the task with enthusiasm, and, not without difficulty, succeeded in bringing the boats up on the slimy bank.

It was warm work, and as Otto Conybeare made no offer to assist him, it was a long time before Clifford managed, first by baling the water out of the boats with an old pail and then by turning them a little on one side when he had partly dragged them out, and emptying them, to finish his task. When he at last raised his head with a great sigh of satisfaction, he saw in the river below a weather-beaten old punt, in which sat a young fisherman of the realistic, not the operatic, kind, wearing a hard felt hat, a stained jersey, and a huge pair of sea-boots, who regarded him with an air of mingled pity and contempt.

“She always gets moogs to do her dirty work, she do,” he observed, with a jerk of the head in the direction of the fair Nell. “And the better dressed they are, the more she likes it. Oh, she’s a rare un, she be.”

Now, it is not in human nature to like being classed among the “moogs,” and Clifford, who could hardly flush a deeper crimson than he had already done with his exertions, tried to assume an air of philosophic indifference in vain.

“I’m afraid you are not chivalrous, my man,” said he, thrusting his arms into his coat and feeling that he would like a plunge into the river.

“I don’t care to pull the ’eart out of my body and get no thank for it,” rejoined the fisherman.

Clifford, in spite of his assumed stoicism, began to feel like a fool. He looked toward the spot where Nell had been standing beside the shed, and saw that she, as well as his two friends, had disappeared. The fisherman grinned and stuck the end of an old pipe in his mouth with an air of snug satisfaction.

“I wasn’t fashionable enough for her, I wasn’t; an’ I thank my stars for it. It’s saved my back many a good load.”

Then Clifford felt satisfied that it was pique at having his own advances rejected which caused the young fisherman to be so contemptuous. So he said, without irritation:

“I should have thought no man would mind doing a man’s work to save a woman’s hands.”

The fisherman puffed away at his dirty little pipe for a few moments in silence.

“Them’s fine words,” he said, at last. “An’ maybe I’d say the same of some women. But not for a little light-fingered hussy like yon,” and he jerked his head viciously in the direction of the Blue Lion.

“Light-fingered!” exclaimed Clifford, with some indignation. “Do you know what you mean by that?”

“Sh’d just think I did! Why, you ask the folks about here what sort o’ character the Blue Lion’s had since young miss was about. Ask if it’s a honest house to stay the night in if you’ve money on yer. Just you ask that, an’ put two and two together like what I do, an’ like what everybody does as knows what the place was afore she came an’ what it is now.”

Clifford shivered under the hot sun of the September afternoon as he listened to this torrent of accusation, and saw by the passion in the young fisherman’s face that he was in earnest.

Before he could answer, Nell’s sweet voice, addressing himself, startled him.

CHAPTER II.

“I’m so much obliged to you, so very much obliged to you.”

Clifford looked round, and saw pretty Nell Claris standing beside the two boats which he had pulled up on the bank by her direction.

“I’m afraid it must have given you a great deal of trouble. One of them was nearly full of water, I know.”

“Why, yes, it wasn’t too easy to get them up, because the bank slopes, and the earth is so slimy just here. But I’m very glad to have been able to do you the little service.”

“It wasn’t a little service; it was a great one,” said Nell, with a look which Clifford felt to be intoxicating.

At that moment he heard a sound like a short, mocking laugh; and turning, with a sudden flush, to look at the river, he saw the fisherman, with a face full of scornful amusement, punting away slowly up stream toward Fleet Castle. Clifford, though he felt a little uneasy, was glad the man had gone.

“Your friends have gone back to Stroan,” said Nell, who had blushed a little, on her side, when she heard the fisherman’s contemptuous laugh.

“Is that a hint for me to follow their example?”

“Oh, no, indeed. My uncle said, when I told him what you were doing for us, that I was to ask you to come in and have a cup of tea with us—if you would condescend to accept an invitation from an innkeeper and his niece?”

Nell smiled a little as she added these words; and the manner in which she uttered them showed so keen a perception of social distinctions that Clifford was confirmed in his belief that the girl was ridiculously out of her proper element in this wayside inn.

He followed her into a tiny sitting-room at the back of the inn, where they were joined by her uncle, a burly, jovial man with a round, red, honest face, who was evidently very fond of his niece, although every word each uttered seemed to emphasize the strange difference in manners and speech which existed between them.

“Proud to know you, sir,” said George Claris, when Clifford held out his hand. “Proud to know anybody my Nell thinks worth knowing. She’s mighty particular, is Nell. Lor’, what wouldn’t your friend, Mr. Jordan there, have given for an invite to tea in here like this! Eh, Nell?”

Nell blushed, and turned her uncle’s attention to his tea, while Clifford, in some surprise, enjoyed the knowledge that he had cut Jordan out without even a struggle.

Nell herself explained this presently, when her uncle had been called away by press of business in the bar, and the two young people were left sitting together, looking through the open glass door into the garden behind the inn.

“I’m afraid you will think I didn’t treat your friend very well, after setting him to work to pitch that shed for us,” she said, with a pretty blush in her cheeks, as she looked down at the table-cloth, and thus enabled Clifford to see that her long, curled, golden-brown eyelashes were the prettiest he had ever seen.

“I’m afraid he will think so,” said Clifford, with affected solemnity. “I think myself that, after such heavy work as that, he did deserve a cup of tea.”

Nell looked up in some distress, her blue eyes brighter with excitement, and her voice quite tremulous in its earnestness.

“Ah, you don’t know!” she said, quickly. “I am not ungrateful, but I am in a very difficult position, and I have to be careful how I treat people. Don’t you know yourself that a great many men, gentlemen too—or they call themselves so—think they have a right to treat a girl who lives at an inn differently from other girls? Surely you must know that?”

Clifford grew red, conscious that the girl had penetrated a weak spot in Willie’s social armor.

“Well, but—”

“Oh, you needn’t say ‘but,’” interrupted Nell. “You know it is true. Now I don’t want to say anything against your friend; he is very nice, and very good-natured; but—”

“You have to keep him in order,” said Clifford.

“Yes. I treat him just as I treat a lot of these young men who come out from Stroan just to idle about the place; as I treated you, to begin with.” And she gave him a pretty little shy glance and smile, which set Clifford’s heart beating faster. “I set them all to work. It does them no harm, and its does my uncle a great deal of good. Since I’ve been here,” and she raised her head triumphantly, “he’s been able to do without a man to look after things.”

Clifford could not help laughing.

“Why, you’re a mascot; you bring luck wherever you go,” said he.

“Indeed, I like to think that I have brought it to Uncle George,” said the girl. “I may tell you—for everybody knows it—that just before I came back to him he was on the verge of bankruptcy, and now,” and she shot at Clifford a glance of triumph, “he has bought another piece of land, and two more cows, and enlarged the stables, and put money in the bank besides. What do you think of that?”

“Why, I think he’s a very lucky man to have such a niece,” said Clifford, more charmed every moment by the girl’s amusing mixture of shrewdness and simplicity.

“It’s very nice for your uncle,” he added, after a little pause, “but is it—” he hesitated, afraid of seeming impertinent, “is it quite as pleasant for you, to live out here, I mean, so far from—from—”

“Civilization?” asked Nell, smiling. “There are some disadvantages, certainly. Of course I know what you really mean, and what you don’t like to say. But when the choice lies between living with my old uncle and helping him, and going away to please myself, is there any doubt what I ought to do? Miss Theodora, who is the best woman in the world, says I ought to stay—I am right to stay.”

Clifford reluctantly agreed with her, and allowed her to prattle on about her uncle and his goodness, and Miss Theodora and her goodness, until the light of the sunset began to fade in the sky.

When he reluctantly rose to take leave, he found that some heavy drops of rain had begun to fall, and he allowed himself to be persuaded by the landlord and his niece to wait until the rain had cleared off. As, however, instead of clearing, the weather gradually became worse, until the day ended in a steady downpour which threatened to last all night, Clifford asked whether they could put him up for the night; and being answered in the affirmative, decided to spend the night at the inn.

The room they gave him was small, but beautifully clean, and was at the front of the house, with an outlook over the marshes to the sea. Clifford, when he retired to it late that night, raised the blind and tried to peer through the mist of rain which blurred the view. He began to feel that he wanted to spend his life in this spot, digging Nell’s cabbages for her, trimming the hedges of her garden, watering her roses, doing anything, in fact, so that he might be near her.

He was in love, more seriously, too, than Willie had ever been, or than he himself had ever been before. He asked himself what sort of a spell it was that this young girl had been able so quickly to cast upon him, and he told himself that it was the sweetness of her nature, the purity which shone from her young soul through her blue eyes, which had enabled her to bewitch him as no mere beauty of face and person could ever have done. He looked at his hand, and saw again in imagination the little soft, white hand, smoother and fairer than any girl’s hand he had ever touched, which had lain for a moment in his as she bade him good night. He felt again the satiny touch which had thrilled him when the little fingers met his. He sat caressing his own hand which had been so honored, intoxicated with his own thoughts.

It was late before the dying candle warned him to make haste to bed. As he turned to the door to lock it, as his custom was in a strange place, he found that it had neither lock nor bolt. And the words of the young fisherman, his warning about the character of the house, flashed with an unpleasant chill through his mind.

The next moment he was ashamed of having remembered them. Of course, there was a possibility, then whispered his common sense, that even the house which sheltered a goddess might also contain a man or a maid-servant who was a common thief. So, as he had a very handsome watch with him, and nearly twenty-five pounds in his purse, he tucked these possessions well under the pillow, and went to sleep, thinking of Nell.

He was awakened out of a sound slumber by the feeling that there was some one in his room.

He felt sure of this, although for a few minutes, as he lay with his eyes closed, he heard nothing but the ticking of the watch under his pillow. After that he became conscious that in the darkness there was a shadowy something passing and repassing between his bed and the heavily-curtained window. His first impulse was to shout aloud and alarm the would-be thief, as he could not but suppose the intruder to be. The next moment, however, he decided that he would wait until the theft had been actually committed, and take the perpetrator red-handed.

He waited, holding his breath.

Sometimes the shadowy something disappeared altogether for a few seconds, to re-appear stealthily creeping round the walls of the little room. Only one thing he could make out from the vague outline which was all he saw of the figure—the intruder was a woman. He heard a sound which he took to be the dropping of his clothes when they had been ransacked. Then, though he hardly saw it, he felt that the figure was approaching the bed.

He remained motionless, imitating the breathing of sleep.

He felt that a hand was upon the bolster, creeping softly toward his head. Then it was under the bolster, and, finally, it was under his pillow. He held himself in readiness to seize the hand at the moment when it should find his watch and his purse.

When once the stealthy fingers had touched these articles, however, they were snatched away with so much rapidity that Clifford had to spring up and fling out his arm to catch the thievish hand.

As his fingers closed upon those of the thief, however, he was struck with a sudden and awful chill on finding that the skin was smooth as satin, that the trembling fingers were slender and soft, the hand small and delicate—a hand that he knew!

“Who are you? Who are you?” he cried, hoarsely.

But he got no answer but the answer of his own heart. His agitation was so great that the little hand wriggled out of his, still bearing his watch and his purse; and in another moment the door had opened and closed, and he was alone.

CHAPTER III.

Clifford King sat up in bed when the door had closed with a flicker of dim light and a rush of cool air, shaking from head to foot with excitement and horror which made him cold and sick.

Was she a thief, then, a common thief, this blue-eyed, pink-cheeked girl who had infatuated him the evening before? This Nell of the soft voice and the bright hair, to whose pretty talk he had listened with delight, whom he had been ready to worship for her gentleness, her affectionate kindness for her rough old uncle? No, it was impossible. He had been dreaming. He would wake presently to find that the experiences of the last few minutes had been a nightmare only.

With a wish to this effect so strong that it was almost a belief, he thrust his hand under his pillow and felt about for his watch and his purse. But they were gone, without the possibility of a doubt.

He sprang out of bed, groped his way to the window and drew back the heavy curtains. The dawn was breaking, and a pale, golden light was on the sea. The rain of the night before had made the air cool and fresh, and Clifford’s brain was as clear as it could be as he threw open the window and had to confess that the visit of the woman with the soft hand had been a terrible reality. He observed by the dawning light that it was nearly four o’clock. He examined his clothes, saw that they had been disarranged, and then he went to the door, turned the handle softly, and looked out.

The landing was small and narrow, and two doors opened upon it besides that of Clifford’s room. A steep and very narrow wooden staircase led up to the top of the house, and looking up, Clifford could just discern that at the top there was one door on either side.

He went back into his room, dressed himself, and sat by the open window in a state of great agitation. Far from yielding at once to the apparently inevitable conclusion, Clifford fought against it with all his might. Quickly as his passion for the girl had sprung up, it was strong enough to make him ready to accept any hypothesis, however improbable, rather than accept the evidence of his own senses when that evidence was against her. He was ready to believe that there was in the house another woman with a hand as small, as soft, as smooth-skinned as the one he had held in his hand when he bade Nell good-night. And then the desperate improbability of this supposition struck him with the force of a blow. He remembered the stalwart, red-handed country wench who had been helping the landlord in the bar, and he was forced to admit that the hand which had taken his watch and purse was not hers. But mention had been made of “Old Nannie,” a personage whom he had not seen, and he told himself that this might be a nickname, and that the bearer of it might prove to be young enough and fair enough to be the owner of the thievish fingers.

Although this explanation of the theft was a very unlikely one, Clifford hugged it with desperate persistency until the dawn of another suggestion in his mind. This was a better one certainly.

Was pretty Nell a somnambulist? If so, it only wanted a good, hard stretch of Clifford’s imagination to picture the girl as continually haunted, both by day and night, with the idea of helping and enriching her uncle, until at last her wishes ran away with her and took shape in her sleep in actual thefts on his behalf. Clifford had read tales of this sort, which he had indeed looked upon as highly imaginative; but now his love made him snatch at this or at any way of escaping the dreadful possibility of having to acknowledge that Nell was a thief.

The sleep-walking notion had brought him some comfort, and he felt quite hopeful about clearing up the mystery, when a faint noise outside his door made him start up and listen. He peeped out upon the landing, but there was no one to be seen. However, he kept his door ajar and watched.

In a few minutes he felt a rush of cold air from the ground floor of the house, and dashing quickly out upon the landing, he came face to face with Nell herself, as she ran up the stairs.

Now if it had not been for the strange occurrence of the night Clifford would have thought nothing of this early meeting. People rise early in the country, and Nell had the live stock to attend to, as she had herself told him, taking her turn with the servants. The fact of there being a visitor in the inn, too, would have explained satisfactorily the care she took not to make any noise.

But with his mind full of the agony of unwilling suspicion, the young man could not help noticing that Nell looked guilty and frightened, that the color suddenly left her cheeks, and that she stammered in her efforts to give him greeting.

“You—you get up very early. I—I had not expected to see you down before eight o’clock,” she managed to say at last.

And there was in her eyes, as she looked shyly up at him, an unmistakable anxiety which made his manner, as he answered, short and cold.

“I was disturbed in the night,” he said, stiffly.

And he avoided her eyes as steadily as she avoided his.

“Dis—turbed!” exclaimed Nell, faintly.

And then she looked up quickly in his face with a glance so full of inquiry, of fear, that, against his wish and his will, Clifford’s own eyes met hers with a suspicious frown.

“What was it that disturbed you?” asked the girl.

He hesitated. Surely this candid anxiety was a proof of innocence, not guilt! Surely a thief would have been ready with a glib speech, with a look of overdone surprise. He looked away again, absolutely unable to frame, to her, the story of his adventure.

“Oh, I don’t know. It was nothing, I suppose,” he answered, confusedly.

He felt that the girl’s eyes were upon him, but he would not meet them. He must speak about his loss, of course, but it should be to her uncle, not to her.

“What are you going to do with yourself till breakfast-time?” she asked, pleasantly. “We have no nice garden where you could walk about on a pleasant lawn and pick roses. Will you go out over the marsh and bathe in the sea? I could show you the way to the ferry. Or would it be too slow for you to watch us turn the cows out?”

Innocence! Surely this was innocence. Clifford only hesitated for a moment. During that moment he told himself that he would conquer his feeling for the girl, that he would not run the risk of becoming more infatuated than he was. But the next moment the girl conquered, and looking down into the fair, sweet face, he was ready to think that his own senses had lied to him, that the hand which had robbed him could not be Nell’s.

So he followed her out into the fresh morning air, helped her to turn the bolts and draw the bars to let out the cows for their day’s wanderings over the marsh, and to look for the eggs which lay warm in the nests of the fowl-house.

Long before breakfast-time the occurrence of the night had become a half-forgotten nightmare, and Clifford was enjoying Nell’s unaffected, lively chatter as much as on the previous day. Only when his hand touched hers, as she took the basket of eggs from him, did Clifford remember, with a shudder, that it was the same touch which he had felt in the night, the same smooth, soft skin, the same slender little fingers; so that he was bound, before he met the landlord, to come back to his old theory that Nell was a somnambulist.

It was a disagreeable business, that of making known his loss to George Claris. But it had to be done, and as soon as he had had his breakfast Clifford followed the landlord to the front of the house, where he was taking down the shutters, and told him he had something unpleasant to relate to him.

The young man at once perceived, by a sudden change to sullen expectancy in the landlord’s manner, that he was not wholly unprepared for the sort of story to which he was listening. He heard with attention the whole story, and only looked up when Clifford described how he had actually touched the hand as it was withdrawn from under his pillow.

“You touched it, you say?” said George Claris, sharply. “Then why on earth didn’t you hold on and shout?”

And defiantly, incredulously, the man, with his red, honest face full of sullen anger, turned to face his visitor.

Clifford hesitated. He had said nothing about the sort of hand it was, and he began to feel that he would rather lose all chance of ever seeing watch or money again than formulate, however euphemistically, the fearful accusation.

“It was—it was a shock, you know!” he stammered, meekly. “The hand was snatched away as soon as I felt it.”

“Well,” grumbled Claris, with apparent suspicion on his side, “it seems to me a strange thing that a man should feel a thing like that without calling out! It’s the first thing a man would do as wasn’t quite a born fool, to jump up an’ make for the feller.”

“Ah!” exclaimed Clifford, sharply.

George Claris looked at him with a deepening frown. “What do you mean, sir?”

“That I am not sure—that I’m very far from sure—that the intruder was a man.”

“Who do you think it was, then? Who do you think it was as took your watch an’ your money? Speak out, sir, speak out, if you dare!”

The blood rose in Clifford’s face. The man’s surly, defiant tone seemed to show that he had either some knowledge or some fear of the truth. But again there rushed over the young man an overwhelming sense of shame, which prevented him from being more explicit.

“I have spoken out,” he said, simply.

For a few minutes the men stood silent, each afraid to say too much. Then Claris, as sullenly, as fiercely as ever, beckoned to Clifford to follow him into the inn.

“Come an’ see ’em, come an’ see ’em all. Search ’em if you like,” said he, bluntly. “And look over the house an’ see if there’s a way in it or out of it that anybody could have got in or out by. Come and see for yourself, I say.”

Clifford followed him in silence into the little bar, allowed Claris to point out to him that the window was still barred and had evidently not been tampered with. And so in turn they examined together the windows and the doors of the whole house; and Clifford saw that, unless Claris himself had been in collusion with the thief, no one could have got in from the outside during the night. But then Clifford himself had not suspected a thief from the outside.

As for the persons who had slept in the house that night, George Claris said they were five in number. Himself, his niece, Clifford, the servant whom Clifford had seen in the bar, and old Nannie, a woman between sixty and seventy years of age, who slept in a small room, which was scarcely more than a cupboard, on the ground floor, because she was too infirm to go upstairs.

Clifford made the excuse of wishing to converse a little with the old woman, that he might have an opportunity of examining her hands. They were withered and lean, rendered coarse by field work, and enlarged at the joints by rheumatism. Without a doubt it was not the hand of old Nannie which had taken his watch and purse.

When he left the kitchen, where he and the landlord had thus interviewed the staff of the establishment, Clifford followed Claris again into the road in front of the inn.

“Now,” said Claris, defiantly, “you’ve seen every blessed creature as was in the house last night. Which of them was it as you think took your things?”

Clifford hesitated.

“I have an idea,” he said, “and I want you to listen quietly, since if it is correct, it takes away all suspicion of any one having acted dishonestly. Is there in your house a—a—woman who walks in her sleep?”

“Not into folks’ bedrooms to steal their money, anyhow,” answered Claris, surlily. “And I’ve never heard of no sort of sleep-walkin’ by either of them.”

“Either of the servants, you mean?” said Clifford with a slight emphasis.

“THIS MAN, THIS ‘GENTLEMAN,’ SAYS YOU’RE A THIEF, MY GIRL.”—See Page [43].

“Yes, of course. Why, man alive! You wouldn’t sure dare to say as my niece, my lovely Nell, was a thief to take your dirty money!” shouted the landlord, with sudden fury, all the more fierce that, as Clifford could see, he had heard whispers of the same sort before. “Here, Nell, Nell! Where are you?”

And, not heeding Clifford’s angry protests, Claris rushed into the house, and almost into the arms of his niece, who, apparently suspecting nothing, came running quickly in from the garden at the sound of her name.

“What is it, uncle?”

She still wore her hat, but it was pushed back; and her pink and white face, glowing with the wholesome sting of the fresh morning air, smiled at the hot and agitated faces of the two men.

“This man, this gentleman, says you’re a thief, my girl! Says you went into his room last night and stole his watch and his money and that he caught your hand in the very act. There, my girl, answer him yourself. Tell him what you think of a cur that tells such lies as them of my bonny Nell!”

The man was genuinely agitated, indeed almost sobbing with rage and disgust. As for Clifford, he was inarticulate; he could only look at the girl, as she grew deadly white, and seemed to lose the bloom of her beauty in horror and amazement as she listened.

CHAPTER IV.

In spite of his own indignation and remorse on hearing Claris make this coarse and cruel speech, Clifford watched the girl narrowly, and was shocked and surprised to observe that while he and her uncle were at a white heat of excitement, she showed remarkable self-control. After a moment’s silence on her part, she interrupted Clifford’s protests and excuses with a little pettish movement of her hand.

“Never mind apologizing,” said she, curtly. “Let us hear what you have to say. Now I know what you meant by your being ‘disturbed.’”

She cast down her glance upon the shabby carpet of the little sitting-room, and stood, leaning with one hand upon the table, her head half turned away, in the attitude of close attention.

It was evident that she did not suffer half so keenly as did Clifford, whose voice was hoarse and tremulous as he spoke in answer.

“You don’t suppose, you can’t suppose, that I accuse you of anything,” said he, trying in vain to meet her eyes, and betraying even to the prejudiced eyes of George Claris the genuineness of his feeling. “I was disturbed in the night. I found a hand under my pillow. I caught the hand with my purse and my watch in it. The hand was a woman’s, small and soft and slender. There, that’s all I know.”

“But you think it’s enough to go upon when you accuse my niece of being a thief!” shouted George Claris, as he brought his heavy fist down with a sounding thump upon the table.

“Hush, uncle!” said the girl, with perfect calmness. “Mr. King never meant that. I am sure of it.”

And to the young man’s intense relief and gratitude, she looked straight in his face with a faint smile.

“Thank you. Thank you with all my heart,” said he, hoarsely.

Nell was still very pale, but she was quite calm and composed; and after a short pause, during which the two men had watched her, wondering what she was going to propose, she suddenly sat down upon a chair and leaned upon the table, in the endeavor to hide the fact that her limbs were not as much under her control as her mind was.

“Let us think it out,” said she. And then, before either of the others had spoken, there passed suddenly over her face a sort of spasm of horror-struck remembrance, as if a half-forgotten incident had suddenly flashed into her mind with a new significance. Clifford saw that a light had broken in upon her. But instead of communicating to her companions the idea, whatever it was, which had flashed through her own brain, she raised her head very suddenly, and meeting Clifford’s eyes with a piercing look, asked:

“You have some idea, some suggestion to make. What is it?”

It was strange how the man had blustered, and the woman prepared herself to reason. Clifford sat down on the other side of the table, feeling that here was a person with whom he could discuss the matter with all reasonableness.

“I was wondering,” he said, gently, “whether you ever walked in your sleep. I know it seems an infamous thing to have dared to connect you with the matter at all—”

“That will do,” she said, gravely. “I don’t want any apologies about that. I can see, Mr. King, that the very notion makes you much more unhappy than it does me.”

The tears sprang to Clifford’s eyes. Every trace of suspicion of her honesty had melted away long since under the influence of her perfect straightforwardness.

“It’s awfully good of you,” he said, gratefully. “As I was saying, somnambulism is the only explanation possible. You must have read of such things. You must have heard that it is possible for a person to take things in his sleep and hide them away without ever being conscious of what he’s done.”

Again there passed over the ingenuous face of the young girl that look which betrayed some vague but horrible memory. It perplexed Clifford and worried him. It was the one circumstance which marred his perfect belief in her, for it showed what all her words denied—that she had a little more knowledge than she confessed to.

“And what made you think the hand was mine?” asked she, in a troubled tone. And instinctively, as she spoke, she tried to hide her hands under the rim of the broad hat which she had taken off.

“Well, the hand was small and soft, like yours,” said Clifford in a low voice. “So small that it was almost like a child’s hand in mine. It seemed to me that I had only touched one hand in my life at all like it.”

Nell shot a frightened glance at him, and in the pause which followed Clifford saw a tear fall on to the table-cloth. He started up.

“Oh, this is horrible!” he moaned.

But the girl sprang up in her turn, and turning to her uncle, cried, in a voice full of energy:

“Uncle George, you must give to Mr. King the money he has lost, whatever it is. Of course,” she went on quickly, turning to Clifford with eyes now bright with excitement, “we cannot give you back your watch, but we can give you the value of it, if you will tell us what it is—the mere money value, I mean. For, of course, that is all we can do.”

But even before Clifford could protest against this suggestion, which he had, indeed, never contemplated for a moment, the innkeeper burst out into a torrent of indignant remonstrance.

“Me give him twenty-five pound! That’s what he said he had on him, an’ who’s to credit it? Who’s to prove it, I say? An’ the vally he likes to set on his watch besides? No, that I won’t. It’s my belief it’s a trumped-up story altogether, an’ I dare him to fetch the police in! I dare him to, I say!”

And he gave another thump on the table.

Avarice as well as anger gleamed in the man’s eyes as he spoke, the avarice of the man who has had to work hard for small gains.

Clifford looked from the niece to the uncle, and suspicion of the latter began to grow keen. Nell retained her presence of mind. She went up to the excited man and put a coaxing hand upon his shoulder.

“Uncle,” she said, almost in a whisper, “you remember there have been other robberies here.”

Her voice sank until the last word was almost inaudible.

George Claris started violently, and shook his fist in the air in a tumult of rage.

“I know there has! I know there has!” said he, between his teeth. “An’ I’d like to catch the rascal as did ’em. But nobody before ’as dared to say you or me was at the bottom of it, Nell. Nobody before has dared to say we wasn’t honest. Why, man, I’ve been settled here these twenty-five years, and I’m known to every man, woman and child between Stroan and Courtstairs. Me take a man’s watch or purse—me or my niece! It’s a plant, my girl, a plant of this fine London gentleman. Twenty-five pounds! You bet it’s more than he’s worth, every rag and stick of him. He’s heard of my misfortunes lately, an’ he’s come an’ trumped up this story, thinking it’ll be better worth my while to pay him the money than have another scandal about the place. But I won’t! I won’t! I’ll do time rather.”

Clifford was torn with battling emotions as he listened to this speech, which was indeed like that of a broken-hearted man. He had not been able to stem the torrent of the poor fellow’s fierce wrath, and it was only when Claris sank down with his head upon the table that he was able to say, very quietly:

“I never thought of asking for compensation, Mr. Claris. I should not think of doing so. All I want is to clear up this detestable puzzle, much more in your interests than in mine. I am not a rich man, but neither am I a beggar, as you have rather unkindly suggested. I can afford the loss of my watch and money, but I cannot afford to leave you and poor Miss Nell here without doing my best to find out the cause of these unfortunate occurrences.”

Then Nell looked again in his face with a smile which made him ready to go on his knees and worship her for her sweet forbearance.

“Thank you,” said she. Then turning to her uncle: “It will all come right,” she said; “or, at least,” she added, hurriedly, “we will hope it may. You go back to your work, uncle, and I will see if I can’t set my wits to work and have something to tell you when I next meet you.”

Claris allowed himself to be coaxed into compliance with her wishes, and presently disappeared into the bar. Then, when they were alone together, Clifford noticed a sudden alteration in her manner toward himself. It was no longer the confiding, childish behavior of a light-hearted girl; it was the responsible gravity of an older and thoughtful woman.

“You are not to distress yourself, Mr. King,” she said, quietly. “Although it is a terrible thing for us, we are, in a way, used to it, for, as you heard me say, there have been two or three cases of theft here before. I hope you are not in a hurry to get back to Stroan, for I should like, before you go, to have a search made of the house and a few more inquiries.”

She would not listen to his protests, his objections, but left him and went upstairs. Clifford, miserable and perplexed, went out into the garden and strolled among the cabbages and carrots, torn by doubts which he tried in vain to suppress.

In about ten minutes he saw, from the corner of the garden where he was smoking his pipe under an apple-tree, Nell coming quickly out of the house by the back way, and flying like an arrow down to the river’s bank. From the glimpse he caught of her face, he saw that she looked scared and guilty, and that she cast around her the glance of a person who does not wish to be observed.

Hastily unmooring one of the boats which lay by the bank, she got in, sculled across the stream, made the boat fast to the opposite shore, and began to run across the open fields as fast as her feet could carry her.

It occurred at once to Clifford that she must be going to take counsel with her friend, Miss Bostal, and he started in the direction of Shingle End himself, thinking that it would be a good idea for him to open his heart to that lady, and re-assure Nell as to his own trust in her through the unimpeachable lips of her elderly friend.

He went by the road, and sauntering along at a very sedate pace, reached the little tumbledown residence of Colonel Bostal just as Nell, emerging from it by a back-gate into the fields, started on her journey back home. She did not see him, but he, looking through the hedge at her, was able to discern that her face was, if anything, more sad than it had been when she left home, and that her eyes were swollen with recent tears.

The prim old maid had been unsympathetic and harsh to her poor little protégée, that was evident, and Clifford felt that he hated the starchy spinster for it.

He could not, however, help feeling that he should like to hear the opinion on the whole matter of people who, like the Bostals, were acquainted with the family at the Blue Lion, and who were at the same time on friendly terms with them.

Miss Bostal herself opened the door as before, and from this and other signs it was easy for Clifford to discover that she and her father kept no servants. She seemed not to be at all surprised by his visit, and when he began to apologize for intruding upon her again, and at such an early hour of the day, she only smiled and asked him to come in.

“I must own that I was engaged in the homely pursuit of peeling potatoes for our early dinner,” said she, as she showed him the old worn table-knife which she held in her carefully gloved hands.

Very careful she was, this dried-up little elderly lady, about the care of her person; she never went into the garden without a sunbonnet to preserve her complexion, nor did any sort of rough work without an old pair of gloves on her hands.

She led Clifford into the drawing-room, a long, pleasant apartment with a low ceiling, with an old-fashioned bow-window that looked to the west and another that looked to the south. The sunshine showed up the shabbiness of which Clifford had noted some traces the day before. The faded cushions, the rickety chairs, the bare fireplace, with nothing but a small sheet of brown paper in the grate to replace the winter’s fire, all spoke of desperate shifts, of the meanest straits of genteel poverty. But Miss Bostal gave him very little time to look about him.

“I can guess what you have come about,” she began, as she put down her old knife upon the side-table in the passage before entering the room. “It is about this dreadful thing that has happened at the Claris’s. But I must tell you frankly that if you have any suspicions of old Claris or his niece, it is of no use your talking to me, for you will get no sympathy. I have known old George Claris for nearly twelve years; and as for Nell, I don’t think I could care more for the girl if she were my own sister. She is as incapable of theft as an angel.”

The lady’s thin, pale face grew quite pink under the energy of this protest, which Clifford hastened to assure her was not needed.

“I believe that just as heartily as you do,” he said, earnestly. “I only want the mystery cleared up for their own sake; and I thought that you, who live so near, might, perhaps, have a notion which would help us to arrive at the truth.”

Miss Bostal smiled triumphantly.

“I have,” she said, emphatically. “I have a very strong notion, indeed. I will tell you in confidence whom I suspect, and I shall try my hardest to find out the truth.”

Clifford’s face glowed with excitement and expectancy.

“Who—who is it?” he asked, breathlessly.

“Jem Stickels,” she answered with decision.

“And who is that? You know I am a stranger here.”

“A young fisherman who owes Nell a grudge because she would not listen to the fellow’s impudent advances. He is always hanging about the place, though, and he doesn’t scruple to threaten the girl to do her some harm, and he is always prattling to people who come this way about the robberies which have been committed at the Blue Lion.”

Clifford listened doubtfully. He remembered the young fisherman in the punt, with his unprepossessing manner and low type of face; and if it had been possible to connect him with the robbery, he would have jumped at the idea as a plausible one. But then the hand he had touched was certainly not that of Jem Stickels, and, moreover, he could not conceive how the young fisherman could have got into the house and out of it unless by collusion with some one within. Rather disappointed, therefore, with the lady’s fantastic idea, as it seemed to be, Clifford, upon finding that she had no better suggestion to make, soon took leave of her, begging her to impress upon Nell his own unwavering belief in her innocence.

In the hope that he might overtake Nell on her way home, or perhaps only with the lover’s wish to tread in the loved one’s footsteps, Clifford obtained Miss Bostal’s permission to go through the little gate at the bottom of her garden, so that he could return to the Blue Lion by the fields. Nell was out of sight, however, by the time he started, and whatever pleasure he extracted from the walk was due only to the knowledge that she had passed this way.

There was a faint track over the fields, not defined enough to be called a footpath, but just clear enough for him to discern by the trodden look of the short grass.

He was within a couple of hundred yards of the little river, and was looking out for any sign of Nell’s presence in the little kitchen garden on the other side, when he became aware that the questionable Jem Stickels was in sight, punting slowly down the stream, as he had done the day before. Catching sight of the gentleman, Jem drew his punt to the shore, and with his black felt hat on the back of his head, his short clay pipe in his mouth, his hands in his pockets, he landed, and slouched along toward Clifford.

“Well, sir, I warned you as how it were not a wise thing to put up at the Blue Lion,” said Jem, with a swaggering insolence which made Clifford want to kick him. “I ’eard of it up at Fleet yonder,” and he jerked his head back in the direction of the old ruined castle up the river. “I s’pose there’s been a grand pretense o’ huntin’ about the place, and how they’ve found nothin’. They’re gettin’ used to these little scenes by this time.”

After one glance at Clifford’s face, the man let his eyes wander elsewhere. Looking shiftily and idly about as he spoke, his attention was suddenly arrested, just as he finished his speech, by something on the ground, apparently a few feet from where Clifford was standing. The latter noticed the rapid change which came over the man’s face, the eager look of interest and astonishment with which he stood gazing open-mouthed at the one particular spot on the ground.

In spite of himself, Clifford turned his head and looked, too.

There, on the grass behind him, not three feet from the track he had followed, was his own watch, with the chain still attached to it, lying half-hidden in the stubbly growth of the field.

For the first moment Clifford stared without speaking or moving, dumb with confusion, with astonishment.

“My watch! How did it get there?” he stammered at last.

The man laughed scornfully.

“Aye, how did it? I think I could give a good guess, if I dared.”

“What do you mean?”

“Why, that this is the way Miss Nell Claris goes to see Miss Bostal at Shingle End, and that nobody but her ever uses it. That is what I should make so bold as to mean, if I could speak my mind. And I’ll wager Miss has been along here this morning. Oh, she don’t get round the swells for nothing, she don’t.”

Clifford sprang at the man and pinioned him by the throat.

“You lying cur!” he hissed out, savagely. “You deserve a thrashing for this!”

But even as he flung the fellow sprawling in the mud of the river-bank, Clifford felt a chill at his heart when he saw the evidence closing round pretty Nell.