The man appeared to have many directions to give, for he talked long and earnestly, and Gerda nodded her head frequently, as if to show her thorough comprehension of what he was saying. At last she glanced at her watch, and they both hurried back to where they had left the boat. He launched his little dinghy, sprang in, seized the oars, and rowed away as rapidly as he had arrived. Gerda stood on the beach looking after him till he had rounded the point and disappeared from her view, then, crying bitterly, she began to walk back in the direction from which she had come. Deirdre and Dulcie waited until she was safely past the corner and out of sight, then they sprang up and stretched their cramped limbs, for the discomfort of their position had grown wellnigh intolerable. "Ugh! I don't believe I could have kept still one second longer," exploded Dulcie. "My feet are full of pins and needles," said Deirdre, stamping her hardest, "and my elbow is so sore where I have been leaning on it, I can't tell you how it hurts." "It can't be worse than mine." "I say, though, we've seen something queer!" "Rather!" "Who can that man be?" "That's just what I want to know." "It looks very suspicious." "Suspicious isn't the name for it. Do you think we ought to tell Miss Birks?" "No, no, no! That would never do. We must say nothing at all, but go on keeping our eyes open, and see if we can find out anything more. Don't let Gerda get the least hint that we're on her track." "Suppose Jessie asks us why we left the cove? What are we to say?" "Why, that we missed Gerda, and as she's our room-mate, we went over the warren to see if we could find her and make a threesome. It was our plain duty." Dulcie chuckled. "Oh, our duty, of course! And naturally, of course, we didn't find her on the warren. She wasn't there." "She'll have to make her own explanations if Jessie asks her where she was." "Trust her for that!" "I wonder what excuse she'll give?" [Illustration: THE MAN APPEARED TO HAVE MANY DIRECTIONS TO GIVE _Page 95_]