u get away
then through woods."

"The boat?" I asked him.

"You leave boat there--anywhere," he answered. "Boat not wanted
again--we go, soon as high water over bar. Hope you get young missie
safe home."

"Bless you!" I said under my breath. Then, remembering that I had some
money in my pocket--three or four loose sovereigns as luck would have
it, I thrust a hand therein, pulled them out, forced them into the
man's claw-like fingers. I heard him chuckle softly--then his head
disappeared behind the rail of the yawl, and I shoved the boat off,
and for the next few minutes bent to those oars as I had certainly
never bent to any previous labour, mental or physical, in my life.
And Miss Raven, seeing my earnestness, said nothing, but quietly took
the tiller and steered us in a straight line for the spot which the
Chinaman had indicated. Neither of us--strange as it may seem--spoke
one single word until, at the end of half an hour's steady pull, the
boat's nose ran on to the shingly beach, beneath a fringe of dwarf oak
that came right down to the edge of the shore. I sprang out, with a
feeling of thankfulness that it would be hard to describe--and for a
good reason found my tongue once more.

"Great Scott!" I exclaimed. "I've left my boots in that cabin!"

Despite the strange situation in which we were still placed, Miss
Raven's sense of humour asserted itself; she laughed.

"Your boots!" she said. "Whatever will you do? These stones!--and the
long walk home?"

"There are things to be thought of before that," said I. "We're still
in the middle of the night. But this boat--do you think you can help
me to drag it up the beach?"

Between us, the boat being a light one, we managed to pull it across
the pebbles and under the low cliff beneath the overhanging fringe of
the wood. In the uncertain light--for there was no moon and since our
setting out from the yawl masses of cloud had come up from the
south-east to obscure the stars--the wood looked impenetrably black.

"We shall have to wait here until the dawn comes," I remarked. "We
can't find our way through the wood in this darkness--I can't even
recollect the path, if there was one, by which they brought us down
here from the ruins. You had better sit in the boat and make yourself
comfortable with those rugs. Considerate of them, at any rate, to
provide us with those!"

She got into the boat again and I wrapped one rug round her knees and
placed another about her