I carefully removed all traces of my own footmarks, and went back to my cave.  My head was humming with my discovery.  I remembered Gresson’s word to his friend:  ‘Tomorrow night.’  As I read it, the Portuguese Jew had taken a message from Gresson to someone, and that someone had come from somewhere and picked it up.  The message contained an assignation for this very night.  I had found a point of observation, for no one was likely to come near my cave, which was reached from the moor by such a toilsome climb.  There I should bivouac and see what the darkness brought forth.  I remember reflecting on the amazing luck which had so far attended me.  As I looked from my refuge at the blue haze of twilight creeping over the waters, I felt my pulses quicken with a wild anticipation.

Then I heard a sound below me, and craned my neck round the edge of the tower.  A man was climbing up the rock by the way I had come.

CHAPTER SEVEN

I Hear of the Wild Birds

I saw an old green felt hat, and below it lean tweed-clad shoulders.  Then I saw a knapsack with a stick slung through it, as the owner wriggled his way on to a shelf.  Presently he turned his face upward to judge the remaining distance.  It was the face of a young man, a face sallow and angular, but now a little flushed with the day’s sun and the work of climbing.  It was a face that I had first seen at Fosse Manor.

I felt suddenly sick and heartsore.  I don’t know why, but I had never really associated the intellectuals of Biggleswick with a business like this.  None of them but Ivery, and he was different.  They had been silly and priggish, but no more—­I would have taken my oath on it.  Yet here was one of them engaged in black treason against his native land.  Something began to beat in my temples when I remembered that Mary and this man had been friends, that he had held her hand, and called her by her Christian name.  My first impulse was to wait till he got up and then pitch him down among the boulders and let his German accomplices puzzle over his broken neck.

With difficulty I kept down that tide of fury.  I had my duty to do, and to keep on terms with this man was part of it.  I had to convince him that I was an accomplice, and that might not be easy.  I leaned over the edge, and, as he got to his feet on the ledge above the boiler-plates, I whistled so that he turned his face to me.

’Hullo, Wake,’I said.

He started, stared for a second, and recognized me.  He did not seem over-pleased to see me.

‘Brand!’ he cried.  ‘How did you get here?’

He swung himself up beside me, straightened his back and unbuckled his knapsack.  ’I thought this was my own private sanctuary, and that nobody knew it but me.  Have you spotted the cave?  It’s the best bedroom in Skye.’  His tone was, as usual, rather acid.

That little hammer was beating in my head.  I longed to get my hands on his throat and choke the smug treason in him.  But I kept my mind fixed on one purpose—­to persuade him that I shared his secret and was on his side.  His off-hand self-possession seemed only the clever screen of the surprised conspirator who was hunting for a plan.