The boat was started and had gotten slowly under way.  During its long idleness it had been borne some distance to southwestward by tide and breeze.  Her work done, Claire turned again to Gavin.

“Don’t try to talk,” she begged—­as she had begged him on the night before.  “Just sit back and rest.”

“Even now, you don’t get an inkling of it,” he murmured mured.  “That shows how little they’ve taken you into their confidence.  They warned you against any one who might find the hidden path, and they even armed you for such an emergency.  Yet they never told you the Law might possibly be crouching to spring on the Standish place, quite as ferociously as those other people who are in the secret and who want to rob Standish and Hade of the loot!  And, by the way,” he went on, pettishly, still smarting under his own renunciation, “tell Hade with my compliments that if he had lived as long in Southern Florida as I have, he’d know mocking birds don’t sing here in mid-February, and he’d devise some other signal to use when he comes ashore by way of that path and wants to know if the coast is clear.”

And now, forgetful of the shadowy course wherewith she was guiding the boat toward the distant dock—­forgetful of everything—­she dropped her hand from the steering wheel and turned about, in crass astonishment, to gaze at him.

“What—­what do you mean?” she queried.  “You know about the signal?—­You—?”

“I know far too little about any of the whole crooked business!” he retorted, still enraged at his own quixotic resolve.  “That’s what I was sent here to clean up, after a dozen others failed.  That’s what I was put in charge of this district for.  That’s what I could have found out—­or seventy per cent of it—­if I’d had the sense not to stop you when you started to tell me, just now.”

“Mr. Brice,” she said, utterly confused, “I don’t understand you at all.  At first I was afraid that blow on the head, and then this afternoon’s terrible experiences, had turned your wits.  But you don’t talk like a man who is delirious or sick.  And there are things you couldn’t possibly know—­that signal, for instance—­if you were what you seemed to be.  You made me think you were a stranger in Florida,—­that you were down here, penniless and out of work.  Yet now you speak about some mysterious ‘job’ that you are giving up.  It’s all such a tangle!  I can’t understand.”

Brice tried to ignore the pitiful pleading—­the childlike tremor in her sweet voice.  But it cut to the soul of him.  And he replied, brusquely: 

“I let you think I was a dead-broke work-hunter.  I did that, because I needed to get into your brother’s house, to make certain of things which we suspected but couldn’t quite prove.  I am the ninth man, in the past two months, to try to get in there.  And I’m the second to succeed.  The first couldn’t find out anything of use.  He could only confirm some of our ideas.  That’s the sort of a man he is.  A fine subordinate, but with no genius for anything else except to obey orders.  I was the only one of the nine, with brains, who could win any foothold there.  And now I’m throwing away all I gained, because one girl happens to be too much of a child (or of a saint) for me to lie to!  I’ve reason to be proud of myself, haven’t I?”