"I saw that the 'ben' room was empty, and the blankets thrown over the three chair backs. But when I asked where the sick man was, Bridget stamped her foot and bade me attend to my business and she would take care of hers. But Jerry, my oldest boy, had a word with me before I left for the march dyke. He told me that the man 'down-the-house' had gone that morning as soon as my back was turned, after paying his mother in gold sovereigns, which she had immediately hidden. "So I went and waited by the Boreland march dyke--a wild place where even the heather is laid flat by the wind. The gulls and corbies were calling down the cliff, and at the foot the sea was roaring through a narrow gully and spreading out fan-shaped along the sands of the Dutchman's Howff. "I waited long, having nought to eat except the sheaf of loaf bread I gat with such an ill grace from Bridget, and at the end I was beginning to lose patience, when from the other side of the gully I heard a crying and a voice bade me follow the dyke upwards and stand by to help. "So upon the top of the wall I got, and there beneath me was the man I had last seen lying in Bridget's best bed, cossetted and cared for as if he were a prince. But for all that he was short and angry, bidding me dispatch and help him or he would lose his tide." "And did he wear the same clothes as when last you saw him?" said Shepstone Oglethorpe, with a shrewd air. At which Boyd Connoway laughed for the first time since he had come into the presence of his betters. "No," he said, "for the last time I saw him he was under the sheets with one of my sarks on, and Bridget's best linen sheet tied in ribbons about his head." "And how, then, was he dressed?" said the Fiscal, with a glance of scorn at Shepstone. "Oh," answered Boyd Connoway, "just like you or me. I took no particular notice. More than that, it was an ill time for seeing patterns, being nigh on to pit mirk. He bade me lead the way. And this, to the best of my knowledge and ability, I did. But the track is not canny even in the broad of the day. Mickle worse is it when the light of the stars and the glimmer o' the sea three hunder feet below are all that ye hae to guide ye! But the man that had been hidden in our 'ben' room was aye for going on faster and faster. He stopped only to look down now and then for a riding light of some boat. And I made so bold, seeing him that anxious, as to tell him that if it were a canny cargo for the Co'en lads, waiting to be run into Portowarren, never a glim would he see." "'You trust a man that kens,' I said to him, 'never a skarrow will wink, nor a lantern swing. The Isle o' Man chaps and the Dutchmen out yonder have their business better at their fingers' ends than that. But I will tell ye what ye may hear when we get down the hill by the joiner's shop--and that's the clink o' the saddle irons, and the waff o' their horses' lugs as they shake their necks--them no liking their heads tied up in bags.'