get to that place you and I have just come from, without leaving any marks on the sand to trace her by.  Shall we say that she walked through the water from this point till she got to that ledge of rocks behind us, and came back the same way, and then took to the beach again where those two heel marks are still left?  Yes, we’ll say that.  It seems to fit in with my notion that she had something under her cloak, when she left the cottage.  No! not something to destroy—­for, in that case, where would have been the need of all these precautions to prevent my tracing the place at which her walk ended?  Something to hide is, I think, the better guess of the two.  Perhaps, if we go on to the cottage, we may find out what that something is?”

At this proposal, my detective-fever suddenly cooled.  “You don’t want me,” I said.  “What good can I do?”

“The longer I know you, Mr. Betteredge,” said the Sergeant, “the more virtues I discover.  Modesty—­oh dear me, how rare modesty is in this world! and how much of that rarity you possess!  If I go alone to the cottage, the people’s tongues will be tied at the first question I put to them.  If I go with you, I go introduced by a justly respected neighbour, and a flow of conversation is the necessary result.  It strikes me in that light; how does it strike you?”

Not having an answer of the needful smartness as ready as I could have wished, I tried to gain time by asking him what cottage he wanted to go to.

On the Sergeant describing the place, I recognised it as a cottage inhabited by a fisherman named Yolland, with his wife and two grown-up children, a son and a daughter.  If you will look back, you will find that, in first presenting Rosanna Spearman to your notice, I have described her as occasionally varying her walk to the Shivering Sand, by a visit to some friends of hers at Cobb’s Hole.  Those friends were the Yollands—­respectable, worthy people, a credit to the neighbourhood.  Rosanna’s acquaintance with them had begun by means of the daughter, who was afflicted with a misshapen foot, and who was known in our parts by the name of Limping Lucy.  The two deformed girls had, I suppose, a kind of fellow-feeling for each other.  Anyway, the Yollands and Rosanna always appeared to get on together, at the few chances they had of meeting, in a pleasant and friendly manner.  The fact of Sergeant Cuff having traced the girl to their cottage, set the matter of my helping his inquiries in quite a new light.  Rosanna had merely gone where she was in the habit of going; and to show that she had been in company with the fisherman and his family was as good as to prove that she had been innocently occupied so far, at any rate.  It would be doing the girl a service, therefore, instead of an injury, if I allowed myself to be convinced by Sergeant Cuff’s logic.  I professed myself convinced by it accordingly.

We went on to Cobb’s Hole, seeing the footsteps on the sand, as long as the light lasted.