He licked Maradick’s bare leg with a very warm tongue and then put a paw on to his arm. They were friends. He ratified the contract by rolling over several times on the sand; he then lay on his back with his four paws suspended rigidly in the air, and then, catching sight of his master, turned rapidly over and went to meet him. Punch expressed no surprise at finding Maradick there at that hour of the morning. It was the most natural thing in the world. People who came to Treliss were always doing things like that, and they generally spent the rest of their lives in trying to forget that they had done them. “I’ve been wanting to see you, Mr. Maradick, sir,” he said, “and I’m mighty glad to find you here when there’s nothing to catch our words save the sea, and that never tells tales.” “Well, as a matter of fact, Garrick,” said Maradick, “I came down after you. I meant to have gone up to your rooms after bathing, but as you are here it’s all the better. I badly want to talk to you.” Punch sat down on the sand and looked quite absurdly like his dog. “I want to talk to you about Morelli, Garrick.” Maradick hesitated a moment. It was very difficult to put into words exactly what he wanted to say. “We have talked about the man before, and I shouldn’t bother you about it again were it not that I’m very fond of young Tony Gale, and he, as you know, has fallen in love with Morelli’s daughter. It’s all a long story, but the main point is, that I want to know as much about the man as you can tell me. Nobody here seems to know very much about him except yourself.” Punch’s brow had clouded at the mention of Morelli’s name. “I don’t rightly know,” he said, “as I can say anything very definite, and that being so perhaps one oughtn’t to say anything at all; but if young Gale’s going to take that girl away, then I’m glad. He’s a good fellow, and she’s on my mind.” “Why?” said Maradick. “Well, perhaps after all it’s best to tell what I know.” Punch took out a pipe and slowly filled it. “Mind you, it’s all damned uncertain, a lot of little things that don’t mean anything when taken by themselves. I first met the man in ’89, twenty years ago. I was a young chap, twenty-one or so. A kind of travelling blacksmith I used to be then, with Pendragon up the coast as a kind o’ centre. It was at Pendragon I saw him. He used to live there then as he lives in Treliss now; it was a very different kind o’ place then to what it is now—just a sleepy, dreamy little town, with bad lights, bad roads and the rest, and old tumbled down ’ouses. Old Sir Jeremy Trojan ’ad the run of it then, him that’s father of the present Sir Henry, and you wouldn’t have found a quieter place, or a wilder in some ways.” “Wild?” said Maradick. “It’s anything but wild now.”