In the heart of the clump the gorse-bushes had been cut away, and piled up in a sort of wall about a small central square some five or six yards across. In the middle of the square some one had dug a shallow hollow, filling rather more than half of the open space. The hollow was about eighteen inches deep, and roughly paved with shingle from the beach, well stamped down into the clay. It had then been neatly wattled over into a sort of trim hut, like the huts the salmon-fishers used to build near Kings-bridge. The wattling was made fairly waterproof by masses of gorse and bracken driven in among the boughs. It was one of the most perfect hiding-places you could imagine. It could not be seen from any point, save from high up in one of the trees surrounding the thicket. A regiment might have beaten the wood pretty thoroughly, and yet have failed to find it. The gorse was so thick in all the outer part of the clump that dogs would leave its depths un-searched. Yet, lying there in the shelter one could hear the splashing babble of the brook only fifty yards away, and the singing of a girl at the mill a little further up the stream. The man told us to get inside the shelter, which we did. Inside it was rather dark, but the man lit a lantern which hung from the roof, and kindled a fire in a little fireplace. This fireplace was covered with turf, so that the smoke should not rise up in a column. We saw that the floor of the hut was heaped with bracken, and there were tarpaulin boat-rugs piled in one corner, as though for bedding. The man picked up a couple of rugs and told us to wrap ourselves in them. "You'll be cold if you don't wrap up," he said. As he tucked the rugs about us I noticed that the ring-finger of his left hand was tattooed with three blue rings. I remembered what Mrs Cottier had said about the man who had lighted her fire in the barn, so I stared at him hard, trying to fix his features on my memory. He was a well-made, active-looking man, with great arms and shoulders. He was evidently a sailor: one could tell that by the way of his walk, by the way in which his arms swung, by the way in which his head was set upon his body. What made him remarkable was the peculiar dancing brightness of his eyes; they gave his face, at odd moments, the look of a fiend; then that look would go, and he would look like a mischievous, merry boy; but more generally he would look fierce and resolute. Then his straight mouth would set, his eyes puckered in as though he were looking out to windward, the scar upon his cheek twitched and turned red, and he looked most wrathful and terrible. "Well, mister," the man said to me, "would you know me again, in case you saw me?" "Yes," I said, "I should know you anywhere." "Would you," he said, grinning. "Well, I was always the beauty of the bunch." He bit off a piece of plug tobacco and began to chew it. By-and-by he turned to Hugh to ask if he chewed tobacco. Hugh answered "No," laughing.