He leaned further out. The frame of the window shook slightly. "We must have this woodwork fixed," he said a little peevishly. "What building is this here on your left?--a store of some kind with the gates off." "That's the empty ice-house. It belongs to you, I believe." "Ah! the empty ice-house. So it is. I never saw an ice-house before." "It is full of water," said the girl, again drawing on the charwoman's store of local information. "It makes me quite uncomfortable to think of it." The man, bending out of the window, shuddered, and shook the window-frame sharply. "There seems to be a great deal of water about here, and it doesn't look very ornamental." "No," said Hetty; "but it's very useful." Crawford's eyes were still directed to the left, but not at so sharp an angle as to command a view of the vacant icehouse. He was gazing across the head of the island at the tow-path. Suddenly he drew in with a muttered imprecation; the window-frame shook violently, and a large piece of mortar fell and struck him on the nape of the neck. He sprang back with a second half-uttered malediction, and stood bolt upright a pace from the window, but did not cease to gaze across the head of the island. Along the tow-path a tall man was advancing rapidly, swinging his arms in a remarkable manner as he walked. "No, no, not hurt to speak of," he answered, with a hollow laugh, in reply to a question of Layard's, still keeping his eyes fixed on the tow-path visible beyond Boland's Ait. "The mortar has gone down my back. I shall change my coat and get rid of the mortar. My portmanteau has come, I perceive. Thank you, I am not hurt. Good evening for the present," he added, as brother and sister moved towards the door. Although he did not stir further from the window, they saw he was in haste they should be gone, so they hurried away, shutting the door behind them. When they had disappeared he went back to the window, and muttered in a hoarse voice: "I could have sworn it was Philip Ray--Philip Ray, her brother, who registered an oath he would shoot me whenever or wherever he met me, and he is the man to keep his word. He lives at Camberwell. It must have been he. If it was he, in a few minutes he will come out on the tow-path at the other end of the island; in two minutes--in three minutes at the very outside--he must come round the tail of the island, and then I can make sure whether it is Philip Ray or not. He will be only half the distance from me that he was before, and there will be light enough to make sure." He waited two, three, four, five minutes--quarter of an hour, but from behind neither end of the island did the man emerge on the tow-path. There could be no doubt of this, for from where he stood a long stretch of the path was visible north and south beyond the island, and William Crawford's eyes swung from one end of the line to the other as frequently as the pendulum of a clock.