road, tumbles him into people he had no thought of meeting, and finally
stops him dead, Heaven knows where--in front of a blank wall, most
likely, at the end of a _cul de sac_. He may sit down then and cry if he
likes, but to that point he has come in spite of his intentions.

The actual settling down to the work, with the material duly ticketed at
his elbow, in Drake's case Hugh Fielding dated back to a certain day
towards the close of October.

Upon that afternoon the _Dunrobin Castle_ from Cape Town steamed into
Plymouth Harbour, and amongst the passengers one man stepped from the
tender on to the quay and stood there absolutely alone. No one had gone
out to the ship to meet him; no one came forward now on the quay-side,
and it was evident from his indifference to the bystanders that he
expected no one. The more careless of these would have accounted him a
complete stranger to the locality, the more observant an absentee who had
just returned, for while his looks expressed isolation, one significant
gesture proved familiarity with the environments. As his eyes travelled
up the tiers of houses and glanced along towards the Hoe, they paused now
and again and rested upon any prominent object as though upon a
remembered landmark, and each such recognition he emphasised with a nod
of the head.

He turned his back towards the town, directing his glance in a circle.
The afternoon, although toning to dusk, was kept bright by the scouring
of a keen wind, and he noted the guard-ship on his right at its old
moorings, the funnels rising like solid yellow columns from within a
stockade of masts; thence he looked across the water to the yellowing
woods of Mount Edgcumbe, watched for a moment or so the brown sails of
the fishing-smacks dancing a _chassez-croisez_ in the Sound, and turned