"I don't like this mist," he said. "It's made me a little uncertain of my bearings. I wonder if you'd mind, Hesther, waiting here for five minutes while I go and see----" "Oh no, we'll all stick together," she interrupted. "Why should we separate? Why, I'm more sure-footed than you are, David. You're trying to mother me again." "No, I'm not," he answered doggedly; "but I'm really not quite sure of the way down, and if we got in a mess half way it would be much worse your being there. Really these paths can be awfully nasty. I want to be _sure_ of my way before you come--really Hesther----" She saw that it was important to him. She laughed. "It's stupid, when I'm a better climber than you are. But if you like it--you're the commander of this expedition." She seated herself on a stone near the pony. The two men walked off. The sea mist was very faint, blowing in little wisps like tattered lawn, not obscuring anything but rendering the whole scene ethereal and unreal. Suddenly, however, as though out of friendly interest, the stars, that had been quite obscured, again appeared, twinkling, humorous eyes looking down over the wall of heaven. "We should be all right," Dunbar said as the two men set off; "we are up to time. The boat is bound to be there. It's lucky the fog hasn't come. That's a contingency I never thought of. The path down to the Cove is off here, to the right of the cottage somewhere. I've studied every inch of the country round here." The path appeared. "Tell me, did you have a queer time with Crispin--the elder one, I mean?" "I've never had so strange a conversation with any one," said Harkness. "Madness is a queer thing when you are in actual contact with it, because we have, every one of us, enough madness in ourselves to wonder whether some one else _is_ so mad after all. He talked the most awful nonsense, and _dangerous_ nonsense too, but there was a kind of theory behind it, something that almost held it all together. A sort of pathos too, so that you felt, in spite of yourself, sorry for the man." But Dunbar was no analyser of human motives. He despised fine shades, and was a man of action. "Sorry for him! Just about as sorry as you are for a spider that is spinning a nest in your clothes cupboard. Sorry! He wants crushing under foot like a white slug, and that he'll get before I've finished with him. Why, man, he's murderous! He loves torture and slow fire like the old Spaniards in the Inquisition. There's so little to catch on to--that's the trouble; but I bet that if he had caught us helping Hesther out of that house to-night there would be something to catch on to! Why, if we were to fall into his hands now! Ugh! it doesn't bear thinking of!"