d shone in the rising sun. I watched
him curiously as he came along the borders of a thick yew hedge at the
side of the gardens. Suddenly, at a particular point, he stopped, and
drawing something out of his towels, thrust it, at the full length of
his arm, into the closely interwoven mass of twig and foliage at his
side. Then he moved forward towards the house; a bushy clump of
rhododendron hid him from my sight. Two or three minutes later I heard
a door close somewhere near my own; Mr. Cazalette had evidently
re-entered his own apartment.

I was bathed, shaved, and dressed by a quarter past seven, and finding
my way out of the house went across the garden towards the wicket-gate
through which I had seen Mr. Cazalette emerge--as he had come from the
sea that way, it was, I concluded, the nearest way to it. My path led
by the yew-hedge which I have just mentioned, and I suddenly saw the
place where Mr. Cazalette had stood when he thrust his arm into it;
thereabouts, the ground was soft, mossy, damp: the marks of his shoes
were plain. Out of mere curiosity, I stood where he had stood, and
slightly parting the thick, clinging twigs, peeped into the obscurity
behind. And there, thrust right in amongst the yew, I saw something
white, a crumpled, crushed-up lump of linen, perhaps a man's
full-sized pocket-handkerchief, whereon I could make out, even in that
obscurity (and nothing in the way of hedges can be thicker or darker
than one of old, carefully-trimmed yew) brown stains and red stains,
as if from contact with soil or clay in one case, with blood in the
other.

I went onward, considerably mystified. But most people, chancing upon
anything mysterious try to explain it to their own satisfaction. I
came to the conclusion that Mr. Cazalette, during his morning swim--no
doubt in very shallow waters--had cut hand or foot against some sharp
pebble or bit of rock, and had used his handkerchief as a bandage
until the bleeding stopped. Yet--why thrust it away into the
yew-hedge, close to the house? Why carry it from the shore at all, if
he meant to get rid of it? And why not have consigned it to his
dirty-linen basket and have it washed?

"Decidedly an odd character," I mused. "A man of mystery!"

Then I dismissed him from my thoughts, my mind becoming engrossed by
the charm of my surroundings. I made my way down to the creek, passed
through the belt of pine and fir over which I had seen the sun rise,
and came out on a littl