"There's some one in this island who hasn't lived in it all their life--not by any means. I've found that out." He nodded significantly at me, but his lips closed tight again and I saw there was no more to be got out of him, so I wished him luck and returned to my chair to think. Whether excitement at the prospect of actually reaching the crisis of this adventure that very night, or chagrin at seeing the problem which had eluded me solved straight off by this great drover of a fellow was my uppermost feeling, I should be afraid to say. I know both were strongly mingled and for a few minutes it never even occurred to me to question whether the man really was within sight of a solution. And then I began to wonder. Who was this mysterious person who had not lived all "their" life on the island? He had concealed, probably deliberately, "their" sex. And was it then a fact of which I myself was unaware? Bolton said he had found it out. But it might be no news to me. I thought of several people, a woman and at least two men, who had certainly lived a considerable part of their lives out of the island. But there was no use speculating with the test so near at hand. All the same I felt so restless that I should have gone out to walk it off there and then had it not been for the fear that I might chance to follow in Bolton's tracks and lead him to think I was doing it deliberately. At all costs I wanted him to see that I was playing the game (as I was playing it), so I waited till after our early dinner and then set off. I well remember the day, a nasty raw specimen of March weather, not exactly raining, but trying to all the time, and altogether grey and dismal. The spring ploughing was proceeding apace, and as the fields grew brown, there was less and less trace of colour left in the landscape. In fact it was a day when something evil could scarcely help happening; or at least it seems so looking back. I walked briskly to keep the chill out, following the winding road, but so wrapt in my thoughts that I hardly noticed where I was going till I found myself passing from the metalled highway on to the rough track that led one beyond the last of the farms out to the desolate stretch of country at the nor' west end of the island. At both sides, and especially on the north, the rocks rose here till they became genuine cliffs, not very high, but rugged and broken, with little hollows dipping down through them here and there and giving scrambling access to small coves. I kept along near this northern cliff line, still thinking all the while, until with a start and a quickening of my heart I became abruptly conscious of a figure fifty yards or so ahead.