and in the meadows, where the grass had stood
the test of the dry spring. We had taken off our coats to help our
neighbour with his sunburnt grass, and our guns were laid across them.
The spaniels had fallen asleep--using the coats as beds. While
conversing with Cubbin we had walked quietly to get our coats, and I saw
that one of the sleeping dogs was still hunting in his dreams. There was
nothing uncommon about this, for dogs will hunt in their sleep; but
some inner voice said to me that Deborah Shimmin, being a highly strung,
nervous girl, might hunt in her sleep also, and that such things as
somnambulists walking the roofs of high houses had been heard of, and I
remembered a lad in my own boyhood's days who was awakened early one
morning by the riverside with his rod in his hand and his basket slung
over his nightshirt. But I did not communicate my theory of the solution
of the mystery of the eggs to Cubbin, the constable.

When the policeman left the field I entered into a kindly talk with
Deborah Shimmin, and was not long in learning what the girl herself had
probably never thought of, that on the public reading of the Act for the
protection of sea-fowl, on the Tynwald day of the previous year, she had
been impressed by the thought that Andrew would now be forbidden to
employ his agility and his courage in a form of sport she often tried to
dissuade him from.

I knew before this that she had recently lost her mother, and had
suffered a bereavement through a favourite brother being lost at sea one
stormy night at the back-end herring fishing off Howth Head.

"Poor Deborah," I said to Fred, "she is all nerves, and the hand of
life's troubles is holding her; surely she must be innocent of
encouraging her lover in risking his life--the only precious life left
to her now!"

"And the jolly Andrew," said Fred, "certainly looked the most amusing
picture of innocence, as Cubbin trotted him along the grass! But your
theory of the somnambulant business is a bit fanciful, all the same."

PART II.

At ten o'clock that night Fred Harcourt and I were bivouaced within
sight of the only door of the house where Deborah Shimmin worked as a
domestic help in the family of her uncle. The night was not dark, it
seldom is dark in these northern islands so late in May, but there was
a light of the moon at its first quarter, and a glint of some stars
shone down upon us as we hearkened to the stillness of the air and to a
frequent