f St. Securis.

"Then," he began, "you don't think the trees--"

"The trees be damned!" snorted the lawyer. "The tree had two legs on
that evening. What our friend the poet," he added, with a sneer,
"would call a walking tree. Apropos of our friend the poet, you seemed
surprised that night to find he was not walking poetically by the sea
all the time, and I fear I affected to share your ignorance. I was not
so sure then as I am now."

"Sure of what?" demanded the other.

"To begin with," said Ashe, "I'm sure our friend the poet followed Vane
into the wood that night, for I saw him coming out again."

Paynter leaned forward, suddenly pale with excitement, and struck the
wooden table so that it rattled.

"Mr. Ashe, you're wrong," he cried. "You're a wonderful man and you're
wrong. You've probably got tons of true convincing evidence, and you're
wrong. I know this poet; I know him as a poet; and that's just what you
don't. I know you think he gave you crooked answers, and seemed to be
all smiles and black looks at once; but you don't understand the type.
I know now why you don't understand the Irish. Sometimes you think
it's soft, and sometimes sly, and sometimes murderous, and sometimes
uncivilized; and all the time it's only civilized; quivering with the
sensitive irony of understanding all that you don't understand."

"Well," said Ashe shortly, "we'll see who's right."

"We will," cried Cyprian, and rose suddenly from the table. All the
drooping of the aesthete had dropped from him; his Yankee accent rose
high, like a horn of defiance, and there was nothing about him but the
New World.

"I guess I will look into this myself," he said, stretching his long
limbs like an athlete. "I search that little wood of yours to-morrow.
It's a bit late, or I'd do it now."

"The wood has been searched," said the lawyer, rising also.

"Yes," drawled the American. "It's been searched by servants, policemen,
local policeman, and quite a lot of people; and do you know I have a
notion that nobody round here is likely to have searched it at all."

"And what are you going to do with it?" asked Ashe.

"What I bet they haven't done," replied Cyprian. "I'm going to climb a
tree."

And with a quaint air of renewed cheerfulness he took himself away at a
rapid walk to his inn.

He appeared at daybreak next morning outside the Vane Arms with all the
air of one setting out on his travels in distant lands. He had a field
glass slun