in the case of, er--Mr. Adams," I said, "you never had any
particulars whatever?"

"Never," replied Martin. "Time, please, gentlemen."

"Aye," said Hawkins, rising. "Time it be. Well, good night, sir. Good
night, Martin."

"Good night."

Hawkins moved towards the door, and indeed was on the point of going
out when I remembered something which I had meant to ask earlier, but
which, owing to lack of opportunity, I had postponed asking.

"You spoke of a gift or keepsake, which the lady from London gave to
Mr. Hines," I said. "I think you mentioned that he had shown it to
you. I am rather curious about this story. Might I ask the nature of
the gift?"

"Aye, to be sure," answered Hawkins, standing half in shadow on the
step of the bar-parlor, rifle on shoulder, where I thought he made a
very wild figure. "Brought it here, he did. All of us see it. That
stuck up about it, he was. Not as I should have thought much of it if
a party had give it to me, I do say."

"Then what was it?"

"Why--it were a little figure like--gold _he_ said it were, but brass
I reckon. Ugly it were, but he says he's goin' to wear it on his
watch-chain. Good night, sir."

He turned and departed, but:

"What kind of figure?" I called after him.

Out of the darkness his voice came back:

"A sort of a _cat_, sir."

And I heard his outlandish laughter dying away in the distance.

CHAPTER XII

I DREAM OF GREEN EYES

It was long enough before sleep visited me that night. For nearly half
an hour I stood at my open window looking across a moon-bathed slope
to where a tower projected, ghostly, above the fringe of the woods.
The landlord had informed me that it was Friar's Park which could thus
be seen peeping out from the trees, and as I stood watching that
sentinel tower a thousand strange ideas visited me.

The curious air of loneliness of which I had become conscious at the
moment of my arrival, was emphasized now that the residents in the
district had retired to their scattered habitations. No sound of bird
or beast disturbed the silence. From the time that the footsteps of
Martin the landlord had passed my door as he mounted heavily to his
bed-chamber, no sound had reached me but the muffled ticking of a
grandfather's clock upon the landing outside my room. And even this
sound, the only one intruding upon the stillness, I weaved into my
imaginings, so that presently it began to resemble the ticking of the
clock on the mantelp