ing against the sea.

"I saw some queer-looking people leaving as I came in," said Sir
Walter Carey. "I suppose they were your witnesses. But why do they
turn up here at this time of night?"

Morton smiled grimly. "They come here by night because they would
be dead men if they came here by day. They are criminals committing
a crime that is more horrible here than theft or murder."

"What crime do you mean?" asked the other, with some curiosity.

"They are helping the law," said Morton.

There was a silence, and Sir Walter considered the papers before him
with an abstracted eye. At last he spoke.

"Quite so; but look here, if the local feeling is as lively as that
there are a good many points to consider. I believe the new Act will
enable me to collar him now if I think it best. But is it best? A
serious rising would do us no good in Parliament, and the government
has enemies in England as well as Ireland. It won't do if I have
done what looks a little like sharp practice, and then only raised a
revolution."

"It's all the other way," said the man called Wilson, rather
quickly. "There won't be half so much of a revolution if you arrest
him as there will if you leave him loose for three days longer. But,
anyhow, there can't be anything nowadays that the proper police
can't manage."

"Mr. Wilson is a Londoner," said the Irish detective, with a smile.

"Yes, I'm a cockney, all right," replied Wilson, "and I think I'm
all the better for that. Especially at this job, oddly enough."

Sir Walter seemed slightly amused at the pertinacity of the third
officer, and perhaps even more amused at the slight accent with
which he spoke, which rendered rather needless his boast about his
origin.

"Do you mean to say," he asked, "that you know more about the
business here because you have come from London?"

"Sounds funny, I know, but I do believe it," answered Wilson. "I
believe these affairs want fresh methods. But most of all I believe
they want a fresh eye."

The superior officers laughed, and the redhaired man went on with a
slight touch of temper:

"Well, look at the facts. See how the fellow got away every time,
and you'll understand what I mean. Why was he able to stand in the
place of the scarecrow, hidden by nothing but an old hat? Because it
was a village policeman who knew the scarecrow was there, was
expecting it, and therefore took no notice of it. Now I never expect
a scarecrow. I've never seen one in t