The sun was rising upon a glorious day when he had passed down the length of the bay to the head, and reached the hotel and the restaurant adjoining. The hotel was not yet alive for the day, but the island itself was astir, and the restaurant was open. Hardrock went in and breakfasted leisurely by the help of Rose McCafferty, who was waitress, cook and proprietor. Finding himself taken for an early tourist from the hotel out for the morning’s fishing, he let it go at that. “Hear any more about the boys who were shot up?” he inquired casually, in the course of the meal. The response stupefied him. “Glory be, and what more is there to hear, except the name o’ the scoundrel that done it? Poor Marty Biddy Basset--a grand boy he was, and only yesterday morning he was settin’ here before me! And Owen John will maybe get well, but the fever’s on him and it’s no talkin’ he’ll do this long while. The doctor at the hotel is wid him this blessed minute.” “Eh?” Hardrock stared at her. “One of them’s dead, you say? I didn’t know that--” “Wasn’t they picked up by the Danes and brought in last night, and poor Marty wid a bullet through him, and two through Owen, and the both of ’em all peppered wid birdshot as well, and the boat ruined wid bullets? There she lays down to the Booth dock this minute--” Hardrock laid a coin on the counter and went out. He stood staring down at the line of fish-sheds and wharves across the road, feeling numb and unable to believe what he had heard. Dead! Yet he had certainly used no bullets; he had neither rifle nor pistol. Mechanically he crossed the road and walked through the soft, deep sand to the fish-company’s wharf. Red-haired Joe Boyle had just opened up the shed and was getting in some box-parts to knock together; he flung Hardrock a casual nod as the latter approached, and went on about his business. The boat was not far to seek. She lay on the north side of the dock, and Hardrock stood gazing down at her. That she was the same which had run him down, he saw at a glance; not many of these boats were open craft; nearly all having a boxlike shelter for engines and lifters and men. Across her weathered stern-sheets was a pool of dried, blackened blood, and the thwart by the engine carried another grim reminder. Fear clamped upon Hardrock--fear lest he be blamed for this affair. It seemed only too probable. Whoever had done the murder, too, must have done it shortly after he himself had peppered the two men with his shotgun. The swift impulse seized on him to run while he could. Instead of running, however, he leaned over and jumped down into the boat. Up forward was a tangle of ropes and lines and life-belts, and a colored object there caught his notice. He picked it up. It was a small pennant-shaped bit of canvas, painted half white, half black, attached to a stick that had broken short off. Moved by some instinct, certainly by no obvious reason, he pocketed it and climbed back to the wharf.