And then, hurriedly running his fingers through his hair, he retraced
his steps for a better start.

"I should first say how kind it is of you to receive a--a stranger, in
this way. I need hardly say that I appreciate it, greatly.... And I
bring his hope that you can be merciful, and forgive him for what he
did. He is badly broken, that I promise you.... It's all so curiously
confused. But it doesn't seem that he can be quite so bad as they're
saying here to-night...."

The stranger hesitated; he was gazing down with grave intentness.

"Miss Heth, Dal swears he can't remember the boat's upsetting at all."

His tone expressed, oddly, not so much a contradiction of anybody as a
somewhat ingenuous hope for corroboration: Carlisle's ear caught that
note at once. She was observing Jack Dalhousie's shabby friend as a
determined adversary observes. He had moved a little nearer, or else the
pale light better accustomed itself to him. And she saw that his face,
though manifestly young, had an old-fashioned sort of look which seemed
to go with his worn clothes; a quaint face, as she regarded it,
odd-looking in some elusive way about the eyes, but, she felt surer and
surer, not dangerous at all.

Now her gaze, shifting, had fastened upon his tie, which was undeniably
quaint; a very large four-in-hand showing pictorially, as it seemed, a
black sea holding for life a school of fat white fish. And then there
came a lovely voice from the shadows--lovely, but did it sound just a
little hard?...