hing which was the
boat. We got into it as silently as we could manage, and cast off. It
was a clumsy, broad-beamed, leaky old conveyance, and that it was as
dirty as Hewitt had described it I could feel as I groped for the sculls
and got them out. The night was light and dark by turns--changing with
the clouds. We shipped the rudder, and Styles steered, or I should
probably have run ashore more than once, for the banks were not always
distinct, and the channel was narrow and dark. We passed the black forms
of several factories with tall chimneys, and then drew out among the
Marshes, flat and grey, with wisps of mist lying here and there. So we
went in silence for a while, till at last we drew in against the bank on
the left and laid hold by a post at a landing-place.

"This is the Channel Marsh," whispered Styles, as we climbed cautiously
ashore. "We can't see the house very well from here, but there's where
Mr. Hewitt will come through."

Looking over the top of the low bank, we could discern a path which
traversed the length of the marsh, entering it by a broken gate at a
neck of land which we must have passed on our way. Here we crouched and
waited. We had heard the half-hour struck on some distant clock soon
after entering the boat, and now we waited anxiously for the
three-quarters. So long did the time seem to my excited perceptions that
I had quite decided that the clock must have stopped, or, at any rate,
did not chime quarters, when at last the strokes came, distant and
plaintive, over the misty flats.

"A quarter of an hour," Plummer remarked. "He won't be a minute late,
nor a minute too early, from what I know of him. How long will it take
him from that gate to the ruin?"

"Eight or nine minutes, good," Styles answered.

"Then we shall see him in seven minutes or six minutes, as the case may
be," Plummer rejoined in the same low tones.

Slowly the minutes dragged, with not a sound about us save the sucking
and lapping of the muddy river and the occasional flop of a water-rat.
The dark clouds were now fewer, and the moon was high and only partially
obscured by the thinner clouds that traversed its face. More than once I
fancied a sound from the direction of the ruin, and then I doubted my
fancy; when at last there was a sound indeed, but from the opposite
direction, and in a moment we saw Hewitt, muffled close about the neck,
walking briskly up the path.

We regained the boat with all possible speed a