* * * * *

Brendon was called to arrest two Russians, due to arrive at Plymouth from New York upon a day in mid-December; and having identified them and testified to their previous activities in England, he was free for a while.  Without sending any warning, he proceeded to Dartmouth, put up there that night, and started, at nine o’clock on the following morning, to walk to “Crow’s Nest.”

His heart beat hard and two thoughts moved together in it, for not only did he intensely desire to see the widow, but also had a wish to surprise the little community on the cliff for another reason.  Still some vague suspicion held his mind that Bendigo Redmayne might be assisting his brother.  The idea was shadowy, yet he had never wholly lost it and more than once contemplated such a surprise visit as he was now about to pay.

Suspicion, however, seemed to diminish as he ascended great heights west of the river estuary; and when within the space of two hours he had reached a place from which “Crow’s Nest” could be seen, perched between the cliff heights and a grey, wintry sea, nothing but the anticipated vision of the woman held his mind.

He came ignorant of the startling events awaiting him, little guessing how both the story of his secret dream and the chronicle of the quarry crime were destined to be advanced by great incidents before the day was done.

His road ran over the cliffs and about him swept brown and naked fields under the winter sky.  Here and there a mewing gull flew overhead and the only sign of other life was a ploughman crawling behind his horses with more sea fowl fluttering in his wake.  Brendon came at last to a white gate facing on the highway and found that he had reached his destination.  Upon the gate “Crow’s Nest” was written in letters stamped upon a bronze plate, and above it rose a post with a receptacle for holding a lamp at night.  The road to the house fell steeply down and, far beneath, he saw the flagstaff and the tower room rising above the dwelling.  A bleakness and melancholy seemed to encompass the spot on this sombre day.  The wind sighed and sent a tremor of light through the dead grass; the horizon was invisible, for mist concealed it; and from the low and ash-coloured vapour the sea crept out with its monotonous, myriad wavelets flecked here and there by a feather of foam.

As he descended Brendon saw a man at work in the garden setting up a two-foot barrier of woven wire.  It was evidently intended to keep the rabbits from the cultivated flower beds which had been dug from the green slope of the coomb.

He heard a singing voice and perceived that it was Doria, the motor boatman.  Fifty yards from him Mark stood still, and the gardener abandoned his work and came forward.  He was bare-headed and smoking a thin, black, Tuscan cigar with the colours of Italy on a band round the middle of it.  Giuseppe recognized him and spoke first.