view.”
His suggestion was adopted at once. One warder climbed down and marched along the saltings, the other followed a sort of sheep-track by the side of the ditch, while the constable wheeled his bicycle along the top of the wall. In this way they advanced as quickly as was possible to the two men stumbling over the rough ground at the base of the wall, searching the steep sides, with their rank vegetation, for any trace of the lost sheep, and making as little noise as they could. So for over a mile they toiled on, scanning every foot of the rough ground as they passed but uttering no word. Each of the warders could see the constable on the path above, and thus the party was enabled to keep together.
Suddenly the warder on the saltings stopped dead and emitted a shout of triumph. Instantly the constable laid his bicycle on the path and slithered down the bank, while the other warder came scrambling over the wall, twittering with excitement. Then the three men gathered together and looked down at the little heap of clothes, from which the discoverer had already detached the jacket and was inspecting it.
“They’re his duds all right,” said he. “Of course, they couldn’t be anybody else’s. But here’s his number. So that’s that.”
“Yes,” agreed the other, “they’re his clothes right enough. But the question is, Where’s my nabs himself?”
They stepped over to the edge of the saltings and gazed at the line of footprints. By this time the rising tide had covered up the strip of smooth, unmarked sand and was already eating away the footprints, winch now led directly to the water’s edge.
“Rum go,” commented the constable, looking steadily over the waste of smooth water. “He isn’t out there. If he was, you’d see him easily, even in this light. The water’s as smooth as oil.”
“Perhaps he’s landed farther down,” suggested the younger warder.
“What for?” demanded the constable.
“Might mean to cross the ditch and get away over the marshes.”
The constable laughed scornfully. “What, in his birthday suit? I don’t think. No, I reckon he had his reasons for taking to the water, and those reasons would probably be a barge sailing fairly close inshore. They’d have to take him on board, you know; and from my experience of bargees, I should say they’d probably give him a suit of togs and keep their mouths shut.”
The elder warder looked meditatively across the water.
“Maybe you are right,” said he, “but barges don’t usually come in here very close. The fairway is right out the other side. And, for my part, I should be mighty sorry to start on a swim out to a sailing vessel.”
“You might think differently if you’d just hopped out of the jug,” the constable remarked as he lit a cigarette.
“Yes, I suppose I should be ready to take a bit of a risk. Well,” he concluded, “if that was his lay, I hope he got picked up. I shouldn’t like to think of the poor beggar drifting about the bottom of the river. He was a decent, civil little chap.”
There was silence for a minute or two as the three men smoked reflectively. Then the constable proposed, as a matter of form, to cycle along the wall and make sure that the fugitive was not lurking farther down. But before he had time to start, a figure appeared in the distance, apparently mounted on a bicycle and advancing rapidly towards them. In a few minutes he arrived and dismounted on the path above them glancing down curiously at the jacket which the warder still held.
“Those his togs?” he asked.
“Yes,” replied the constable. “I suppose you haven’t seen a gent bathing anywhere along here?”
The newcomer shook his head. “No,” said he. “I have patrolled the whole wall from Clifton to here and I haven’t seen a soul excepting old Barnett, the shepherd.”
The elder warder gathered up the rest of the clothes and handed them to his junior. “Well,” he said, “we must take it that he’s gone to sea. All that we can do is to get the Customs people to give us a passage on their launch to make the round of all the vessels anchored about here. And if we don’t find him on any of them, we shall have to hand the case over to the police.”
The three men climbed to the top of the wall and turned their faces towards the town; and the Clifton patrol, having turned his bicycle about, mounted expertly and pedalled away at a smart pace to get back to his station before the twilight merged into night.
At that very moment, the fugitive was stepping over a stile that gave access from the marshes to a narrow, tree-shaded lane. Here he paused for a few moments to fling away the bundle of driftwood into the hedge and refill and light his pipe. Then, with a springy step, be strode away into the gathering moonlit dusk.
CHAPTER I
MR. POTTERMACK MAKES A DISCOVERY
A conscientious desire on the part of the present historian to tell his story in a complete and workmanlike fashion from the very beginning raises the inevitable question. What was the beginning? Not always an easy question to answer offhand; for if we reflect upon certain episodes in our lives and try to track them to their beginnings, we are apt, on further cogitation, to discover behind those beginnings antecedents yet more remote which have played an indispensable part in the evolution of events.
As to this present history the whole train of cause and consequence might fairly be supposed to have been started by Mr. Pottermack’s singular discovery in his garden. Yet, when we consider the matter more closely, we may doubt if that discovery would ever have been made if it had not been for the sun-dial. Certainly it would not have been made at that critical point in Mr. Pottermack’s life; and if it had not—but we will not waste our energies on vain speculations. We will take the safe and simple course. We will begin with the sun-dial.
It stood, when Mr. Pottermack’s eyes first beheld it, in a mason’s yard at the outskirts of the town. It was obviously of some age, and therefore could not have been the production of Mr. Gallett, the owner of the yard; and standing amidst the almost garishly new monuments and blocks of freshly hewn stone, it had in its aspect something rather downfallen and forlorn. Now Mr. Pottermack had often had secret hankerings for a sun-dial. His big walled garden seemed to cry out for some central feature: and what more charming ornament could there be than a dial which like the flowers and trees amidst which it would stand lived and had its being solely by virtue of the golden sunshine?
Mr. Pottermack halted at the wide-open gate and looked at the dial (I use the word, for convenience to include the stone support). It was a graceful structure with a twisted shaft like that of a Norman column, a broad base and a square capital. It was nicely lichened and weathered, and yet in quite good condition. Mr. Pottermack found something very prepossessing in its comely antiquity. It had a motto, too, incised on the sides of the capital; and when he had strolled into the yard, and, circumnavigating the sun-dial, had read it, he was more than ever pleased. He liked the motto. It struck a sympathetic chord. Sole orto: spes: decedente pax. It might have been his own personal motto. At the rising of the sun; hope: at the going down thereof, peace. On his life the sun had risen in hope: and peace at eventide was his chief desire. And the motto was discreetly reticent about the intervening period. So, too, were there passages in the past which he was very willing to forget so that the hope of the morning might be crowned by peace when the shadows of life were lengthening.
“Having a look at the old dial, Mr. Pottermack?” said the mason, crossing the yard and disposing himself for conversation. “Nice bit of carving, that, and wonderful
