lt curiously at peace. The times of the Long Ago came
back not ungratefully to his mind. There had been much pleasure in them.
He even thought kindly of the girl with whom he had walked in the glory
of a forgotten summer along the hidden ways of the woods. Her last
letter, long since destroyed, was not disagreeable to him when he
thought of the secret which had been laid to rest so quietly in the pool
of the Black Water.

He came to the water's edge. He sent his voice, stronger now than of
yore, but without the old ring of boyish hopefulness, across the loch. A
moment's silence, the whisper of the night wind, and then from the gloom
of the farther side an answering hail--low, clear, and penetrating.

"I am in luck to find them out of bed," said Gregory Jeffray to himself.

He waited and listened. The wind blew chill from the south athwart the
ferry. He shivered, and drew his fur-lined travelling-coat about him. He
could hear the water lapping against the mighty piers of the railway
viaduct above, which, with its gaunt iron spans, like bows bent to send
arrows into the heavens, dimly towered between him and the skies.

Now, this is all that men definitely know of the fate of Sir Gregory
Jeffray. A surfaceman who lived in the new houses above the
landing-place saw him standing there, heard him hailing the Waterfoot of
the Dee, to which no boat had plied for years. Maliciously he let the
stranger call, and abode to see what should happen.

Yet astonishment held him dumb when again across the dark stream came
the crying, thrilling him with an unknown terror, till he clutched the
door to make sure of his retreat within. Mastering his fear, he stole
nearer till he could hear the oars planted in the iron pins, the push
off the shore, and then the measured dip of oars coming towards the
stranger across the pool of the Black Water.

"How do they know, I wonder, that I want to be taken to the Rhonefoot?
They are bringing the small boat," he heard him say.

A skiff shot out of the gloom. It was a woman who was rowing. The boat
grounded stern on. The watcher saw the man step in and settle himself on
the seat.

"What rubbish is this?" Gregory Jeffray cried angrily as he cleared a
great armful of flowers off the seat and threw them among his feet.

The oars dipped, and without sound the boat glided out upon the waves of
the loch towards the Black Water, into whose oily depths the blades fall
silently, and where the water doe