“At last—­I thank you!” Tom broke out impatiently.

He felt incomprehensibly nervous; and angry with himself for so feeling.

“Commend me to our friend for taking his time about things, and incidentally wasting ours—­yours and mine, I mean!  What on earth did he want?  He certainly treated us to a sufficiently comprehensive inspection.  Well, I hope he was satisfied.  By the same token, have you any conception who the fellow is?”

Damaris shook her head.  She, too, appeared perturbed.  Her eyebrows were drawn into a little frown and her expression was perplexed to the point of child-like distress.

“Not any,” she answered simply.  “Some one staying at Faircloth’s Inn possibly.  People come there from Marychurch to spend the day during the summer.  Old Timothy Proud, the lobster-catcher, who brought him round in his boat, lives at one of the cottages close to the Inn.  No,” she repeated, “I have no conception who he is, and yet his face seemed familiar.  I had a feeling that I knew him quite well—­had seen him often, oh! very often before.”

“Ah! then you were puzzled by some mysterious likeness,”—­Tom began eagerly, smiling at her.  And stopped short, open-mouthed, assailed by so apparently preposterous a recognition that for the minute it left him fairly speechless.

But Damaris, busy with her own sensations, her glance still following the blue-clad figure along the shore and out on to the tumble-down wooden jetty, failed to remark his embarrassment and thus gave him time to recover his scattered wits.

“Jennifer is bringing the ferry-boat across,” she said presently, “so you won’t have to wait much longer.  Not that you need be at all anxious about those letters.  It is not my father’s habit to forget a promise.  Most likely they were written last night before he went to bed.  He sleeps badly, I am sorry to say, and is glad to cheat the wakeful hours by reading and doing his correspondence until late.”

As she spoke the young girl rose to her feet, pulling the close-fitting jersey down over her hips and, stooping, dusted particles of sand off the hem of her dress.

“There—­that’s better.  Now I am tidy.  Shall we go home, cousin Tom?” she asked.

Her eyes shone with inward excitement and she carried her head proudly, but her face was white.  And he, sensible that she had suddenly hardened towards him and strove, he could not divine why, to keep him at arm’s length, turned perversely teasing again.  He would not await a more convenient season.  Here and now he would satisfy his curiosity—­and at her expense—­regarding one at least of the queer riddles Deadham Hard had sprung on him.

“I did not know your father suffered from sleeplessness,” he said.  “It must be horribly trying and depressing.  I am glad, in a way, you have told me, because it may account for my seeing him go out into the garden from the study last night, or rather very early this morning.  It would be about two o’clock.  I put down his appearance to another cause, and”—­