“I’ll have to tell you the whole tale, I see:  and it’s only fair.”

“Not a bit,” said I stoutly.  “Tell me what you want done and I’ll do it.  Afterwards tell me your reasons, if you care to.  Indeed, Sir, I’d rather have it that way, if you don’t mind.  I was abominably disrespectful this afternoon—­”

“No more about that.”

“But I was:  and with your leave, Sir, that’s the form of apology I’ll choose.”

And I stood up with my hands in my pockets.

“Nonsense, nonsense,” said the Vicar, eyeing me with a twinkle.  But I nodded back in the most determined manner.

“Your instructions, sir—­that is, unless you prefer to get another helper.”

“But I cannot,” pleaded he.  “That’s the mischief.”

“Very well, then.  Your instructions, please.”  And thus I had my way.

This happened on a Tuesday.  The next evening I walked down to the Porth and launched my boat.  A row of idlers watched me from the long bench under the life-boat house, and a small knot on the beach inspected my fishing-gear and lent a hand to push off.  “Ben’t goin’ alone, be ’e?” asked Renatus Warne.  “Yes,” said I.  “The conger’ll have ’ee then, sure enough.”  One or two offered chaffingly to come out and search for me if I shouldn’t return before midnight; and a volley of facetious warnings followed me out upon the calm sea.

The beach was deserted, however, when I returned.  I had hooked three fine conger; and having hauled up the boat and cleaned her, I made my way back to the vicarage, well pleased, getting to bed as the clock struck two in the morning.

This was Thursday; and in the evening, between seven and eight o’clock, I launched the boat again under the eyes of the population and started fishing on the inner grounds, well in sight of the Porth.  Dusk fell, and with it the young moon dropped behind the western headland.  Far out beyond Menawhidden the riding-lights of a few drifters sparkled in the darkness:  but I had little to fear from them.

The moon had no sooner disappeared than I shifted my ground, and pulling slowly down in the shore’s shadow (I had greased the leathers of my oars for silence), ran the boat in by the point under Gunner’s Meadow, beached her cunningly between two rocks, and pulled a tarpaulin over to hide her white-painted interior.  My only danger now lay in blundering against the coastguard:  but by dodging from one big boulder to another and listening all the while for footsteps, I gained the withy bed at the foot of the meadow.  The night was almost pitch-black, and no one could possibly detect the boat unless he searched for it.

I followed the little stream up the valley bottom, through an orchard, and struck away from it across another meadow and over the rounded shoulder of the hill to my right.  This brought me in rear of a kitchen-garden and a lonely cob-walled cottage, the front of which faced down a dozen precipitous steps upon the road leading from Lansulyan to the Porth.  The cottage had but one window in the back, in the upper floor; and just beneath it jutted out a lean-to shed, on the wooden side of which I rapped thrice with my knuckles.