town before six o'clock. At the railway station I breakfasted and
presently took a train to Dartmouth. Before noon I reached "Crow's
Nest" and made acquaintance with Bendigo Redmayne. He was such a man
as Jenny had led me to expect and I found it easy enough to win his
friendship and esteem.

But he had little leisure for me at this moment, for there had
already come news from his niece of the mysterious fatality on
Dartmoor.

Needless to say that my thoughts were now entirely devoted to my
wife and I longed for her first communication. Our briefest
separation caused me pain, for our souls were as one and we had not
been parted, save for my visit to Southampton, since our marriage
day.

It was her exquisite thought to involve the man from Scotland Yard.
Mark Brendon, then known to be taking holiday at Princetown, had
been pointed out to her; she appraised him correctly and her
woman's intuition told her what verisimilitude would spring from his
active cooperation. Secure in her own genius, she therefore
complicated the issues by appealing to Brendon and winning his
enthusiastic assistance. Much sprang from this, for the poor fellow
was soon a willing victim to Jenny; and while he lent a thousand
happy touches to subsequent incidents by his inefficiencies and sins
of omission, such moderate talent as he possessed was still farther
obscured by the emotion of love which sprang up in his heart for my
widowed partner. Thus he became exceedingly useful as time passed;
yet fortune favours fools and his very stupidity served him well at
the end; for when I sought to destroy him on Griante and believed