At length, when half-an-hour had passed, and it was almost dark, he became restless, excited, and in the end went down-stairs. In the front room he found Layard on the top of a step-ladder. He said: "I was looking out of my window, and a man, coming from the northern end of the tow-path, disappeared behind the island, behind Boland's Ait. He has not come back and he has not come out at the other end. Where can he have gone? Is there some way of getting off the tow-path between the two points?" The speaker's manner was forced into a form of pleasant wonder; but there were strange white lines, like lines of fear, about his mouth and the corners of his eyes, "Is there a gate or way off the tow-path?" "No. The man _must_ have come off the tow path or gone into the water and been drowned," said Layard, not noticing anything peculiar in the other, and answering half-playfully. "That would be too good," cried Crawford with a start, apparently taken off his guard. "Eh?" cried Layard, facing round suddenly. He was in the act of driving in a brass-headed nail. The fervour in Crawford's tone caught his ear and made him suspend the blow he was about to deliver. "Oh, nothing," said the other, with one of his short laughs. "A bad-natured joke. I meant it would be too much of a joke to think a man could be drowned in such a simple way. But this man hid himself behind the island and did not come forth at either end for half-an-hour, and I thought I'd ask you what you thought, as the circumstance piqued me. Good-night." When he found himself in his own room he closed the window, pulled down the blind, hasped the shutters, and drew the curtains. He looked round on the simple unpretending furniture suspiciously, and muttered: "He here--if it were he, and I think it was, appearing and disappearing in such a way! He cannot have found me out? Curse him, curse her; ay, curse her! Is not that all over now? She was to blame, too." He walked up and down the room for an hour. "If that was Philip Ray, where did he go to? He seems to have vanished. Layard knows every foot of this place. It was Philip Ray, and he did vanish! Could he have seen me and recognised me? or could he have tracked me, and is he now out on that little quay or wharf under my window, _waiting_ for me? Ugh!" CHAPTER III. THE PINE GROVES OF LEEHAM.