ruins of the old Keep seemed to stand sentinel. He made inquiry at open
doors and of little groups of men gathered on the quay and by the
drawn-up boats--nobody knew anything. According to what they told him,
most of these people had been out and about all the previous afternoon;
it had been a particularly fine day, that Sunday, and they had all been
out of doors, on the quay and the shore, in the sunshine. But nobody had
any recollection of the man described, and Copplestone came to the
conclusion that Oliver had not chosen that side of the bay. There was,
however, one objection to that theory--so far as he could judge, that
side was certainly the more attractive. And he himself went on to the end
of it--on until he had left quay and village far behind, and had come to
a spit of sand which ran out into the sea exactly opposite the group of
rocks of which Mrs. Wooler had spoken. There they lay, rising out of the
surf like great monsters, a half-mile from where he stood. The tide was
out at that time, and between him and them stretched a shining expanse of
glittering wet sand. And, coming straight towards him across it,
Copplestone saw the slim and graceful figure of a girl.




CHAPTER III

THE MAN WHO KNEW SOMETHING


It was not from any idle curiosity that Copplestone made up his mind to
await the girl's nearer approach. There was no other human being in view,
and he was anxious to get some information about the rocks whose grim
outlines were rapidly becoming faint and indistinct in the gathering