“I don’t think he’s a rascal,” I answered. “I have always found him above board and square. If he is really on Mullen’s heels the temptation to turn his discovery to his own account is pretty strong. Twenty-five thousand pounds, not to speak of the kudos, isn’t made every day, my boy. It’s rather like shaking an apple-tree in order that somebody else may pick up the fruit,--to do the work and then see another man go off with the money-bags. No, I think he’s acted honourably in giving me due notice that he’s going to run the show himself, and in offering to return the ‘exs.’ as he calls them. Many men would have gone on taking the coin while working on their own account.” “What are you going to do?” queried Grant. “Run down to Baxenham to-morrow. I don’t suppose I shall get any change out of Green, but I may hear something that will help me to put two and two together in regard to our late visitor on the ‘Cuban Queen.’ As Green has been working on my money and in my service I shan’t feel any qualm of conscience in finding out his wonderful secret--if I can--and of making use of it if I do find it.” Next morning I was up betimes to catch an early train to town and thence to Yarby, where I arrived late in the afternoon. Baxenham is a little village on the coast, some five miles distant, and the shortest way there from Yarby is by a footpath across the fields. A lovelier walk I have seldom had. The sunset was glorious, so glorious that for a while I sat like one rapt, dreaming myself back into the days of my childhood, and forgetful of everything but the beauty that lay before me. I remembered the fair-haired little boy who day after day, as the afternoon was waning, would climb the stairs which led to a tiny garret under the roof. There was only one window in this garret, a window which faced the west and was cut in the roof itself. Looking down, one saw the red tiles running away so steeply beneath that the little boy could never glance at them without a catching of breath, and without fancying what it would be like to find oneself slipping down, down the steep descent until one reached that awful place--the world’s edge, it seemed to him--where the roof ended in a sheer and terrible abyss. But it was to see the sunset that the little boy would climb the stairs each day, and as he dreamed himself out into that sunset it seemed a part of himself--not merely a thing at which to look.